Murder By Design

by Erin McCarthy

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Bailey Burke?”

  “Yes, who’s this?” I gestured for Cezar to come with me. He seemed to be lingering in the doorway. I shut the door behind him.

  “This is Sheriff Hill.”

  Gross. “Oh hi, Sheriff. What can I do for you?” Offer him a personality?

  “Have you heard from Mr. Wozniak?”

  Interesting. “No, I haven’t. Have you?” I figured I had just as much of a right to ask as he did.

  “No. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

  “No.” This was weird. What was up the Sheriff’s sleeve? “I’ll let you know if I do.” I thought about mentioning his sons hadn’t heard from him either, but decided the less I talked to Lawson Hill the better.

  “Great, thanks. Hey, uh, totally unrelated, do you think you could give me your friend’s number?”

  What the heck? Did I look like a matchmaker? “I don’t want to do that without asking her first.” Personally, I would kill Alyssa if she gave some guy my number without asking, and she had been hating pretty hard on the sheriff. But with her, there was no telling. She might jump at the chance to go out with him.

  “Sure, yeah, that makes sense. I’ll text you my number and you can forward it to her.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  There was an awkward silence then he said, “Great, thanks, let’s talk soon.”

  Let’s not. “Bye, Sheriff.”

  “That was weird,” I told Cezar as we got in my car. “The sheriff totally wants to bang Alyssa. He called just to get her number. Isn’t that a little unprofessional?”

  “He’s taking bribes. I think using you to get a date isn’t all that big of a deal.” Cezar folded his arms over his stomach. “You know what’s weird? I don’t feel cold. I’m in these damn swim trunks and it’s clearly cold out because you’re wearing a sweater, and I don’t feel anything. It’s like…San Diego.”

  “Being dead is like San Diego?” I stared blankly at him.

  “Yeah, like the temperature is irrelevant. It’s not hot. It’s not cold. It’s just…air.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad then.” I was not a fan of the cold myself. My sister constantly suggested I move to Texas to be her bestie, but while weather was not in the Top Ten Reasons to Stay, I loved being in Cleveland. Friends and family and a sense of home. Not to mention legitimately awesome food options.

  “Are you supposed to be driving with one arm?” Cezar asked, eyeing me suspiciously.

  That was a good question. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. But I’m a skilled driver.” It was something I felt confident about. “I feel like I could have been a NASCAR driver if I wasn’t so uncomfortable in a jumpsuit. I don’t understand jumpsuits and rompers. When you sit down, the whole back pulls. You have to reach around under your butt and pull it so you have some slack around your waist.” Really, why had they become a thing?

  “I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  So he didn’t want to hear my musings on fashion problems of the modern woman. “Just trust me. I can drive.” I was actually using both hands, I left my right arm in the sling, but had it slack.

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  Huh. Now that he mentioned it. “The storage unit?”

  “Yeah, but do you know where that is?”

  “No.” I had pulled out of my driveway and come to the first stop sign. “Right or left?”

  “You’re something else, you know that?”

  “As long as it’s a good something.”

  “It is.” He sighed. “You sure you don’t want to date Slade? You’d be a nice fit.”

  Was he hitting the vodka in purgatory? Slade was a disdainful jerk who didn’t like me. And I very much didn’t like him. I would rather date Cezar. Well. Maybe. “I have a boyfriend,” I reminded him. “Who I happen to really like.”

  I got the address from Cezar and put it in my phone. As I was starting to head that way, my grandmother called me. “Hello?” It was rare for me to hear directly from her, so my heart skipped a beat.

  “You have a bum arm and you’re talking on your phone?” Cezar chastised me.

  “Hi, honey, where are you?”

  “I’m driving right now.”

  “You have an injured arm and you’re driving and talking on the phone? What are you, nuts?” she asked in astonishment. “Call me back when you’re in a parking spot.”

  She hung up on me before I could even respond. “Well, my grandmother agrees with you.” I realized she was probably just calling to check up on me after hearing about my little accident. I tossed my phone in the cup holder and concentrated on the road.

  Cezar gave me a code to punch into the gate at the storage facility and I pulled through, heading back to unit 165, way in the back. It was away from the majority of the overhead lights, and right where the property ended in a scrubby line of trees that was between the asphalt and the concrete wall for the highway beyond. I could hear the hum of traffic despite the wall and shivered a little, even though it was broad daylight.

  It wasn’t derelict by any means, but it just felt oddly isolated in the midst of the city and surrounding industrial warehouses. “What’s in this storage unit again? Besides money?”

  “Property.”

  That was specific. That sounded to me like stolen goods. What would anyone steal these days? I had no idea what was hot on the black market. When I opened the unit a minute later, I got my answer. Electronics. Floor to ceiling TVs in the original boxes.

  But that was the least noteworthy thing about the unit.

  What slammed into me in overwhelming intensity was the odor. The smell of death. Decomposition.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to go in any closer to the source, because I knew what it was. It had to be a body. But Cezar murmured, “What? Why do you have that look on your face?”

  “You don’t smell that?” I covered my mouth and nose. “It’s horrible.”

  I could hear the slapslap of Cezar’s flip-flops on the concrete floor as he went ahead of me into the interior. “Nothing in here should smell, so you know what that means don’t you?”

  Tentatively I followed him deeper into the dark interior. There was a chain coming down from a lightbulb and I pulled it. It wasn’t bright, but it did allow me to see. “That a cat got trapped in here and died?” I asked, hopeful. I’m an animal lover and would hate to wish for a cat’s demise, but I knew that was no cat. The smell was overwhelming.

  Cezar stopped walking, his hands on his hips. “Buzz. Wrong answer. It’s me and I look like shit on a shingle.”

  Using Cezar’s hairy back as a shield I went on tiptoes and peered around him. “Oh God.” I clapped my hand over my mouth. “You don’t look so good.”

  Cezar’s body was on the floor, propped against a wall.

  By the water in the lawn chair, he had looked alive, almost. Just slightly dead. Still and startled, but not as gruesome as this.

  This was a bloated, stiff corpse, ashen and very, very stinky.

  I went to turn and run for the fresh air when, without warning, the door slid down and slammed shut. I screamed and hurtled myself at it, but the lock clicked in place.

  I was trapped with Cezar’s ghost and Cezar’s body.

  Double trouble.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Don’t panic,” Cezar said.

  What are the odds that someone suggesting in a moment of sheer horror that you keep calm actually works? One in a thousand? One in a hundred thousand? A million?

  I was locked in a dark metal box with a ghost and a dead body. I was panicking. I started screaming at the top of my lungs and beating my fists on the interior of the door. “Help! Somebody help me, I’m trapped!” I bent over and tried to open the door. It didn’t budge.

  “Bailey, come on, take a breather,” Cezar urged, his hands coming out in some ghostly gesture of reassurance.

  “I can’t take a breather
! If I breathe I will smell your body and if I smell your body I’m going to throw up and if I throw up I’m going to die!”

  That was me not panicking.

  Not my strong suit.

  “You know, I might take offense to that if I were a little more sensitive.” He rubbed his jaw. “Look, don’t you have your phone on you? Just call your boyfriend.”

  Right. My phone. I had left my purse in the car. I had my keys, which did me no good. They were still in my hand. But what had I done with my phone? I patted my pockets frantically, but I didn’t usually put my phone in them. I closed my eyes and tried to think. What had I been doing before I got out of the car, after talking to my grandmother. Damn it. I had thrown it in the cup holder.

  My chest squeezed and I groaned. “I left it in the car.”

  “Why don’t these things have an inside lock? You have the key to the unit. Really, there should be a mechanism to allow you to get out from the inside.”

  “Great theory,” I snapped. “But pointless right at this juncture.”

  Cezar gave me a look. “All right, take a deep breath, kid. Get it together.”

  “Stop telling me to breathe!” I covered my mouth with my sweater. “I can’t breathe.” I could still smell the body, but breathing through a cotton blend diminished it at least. Yep. Full blown panic. I darted my gaze around the dim interior of the unit. There was nothing that could help me. Just box after box after box. I realized that I needed to search the entirety of the unit just to make sure there was nothing I could use to escape, but that meant moving past Cezar’s body. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to see it again.

  Bad enough outside by the lake, but that had been in fresh air, and for a few seconds before I ran. It had also been Cezar recently deceased, as opposed to days and days dead. I wanted to be brave. I had gotten out of rough scrapes in the past. My shoulder throbbed to remind me of that fact. I strongly wished I had my e-cigarette, which I had all but abandoned the last month. Maybe after one puff I could think.

  Gingerly picking my way past boxes, I did a circuit of the perimeter of the unit, avoiding the back where Cezar was. There was nothing to see here. Just stolen electronics and a corpse.

  Back at the front, I slammed the fist of my good arm into the door again. It reverberated loudly, and caused me some light pain, but nothing happened. I put my ear to it and tried to listen to what was going on in the compound, but all I could hear was the hum of the highway. I remembered how remote the back of the property had seemed to me and felt my throat constricting. “Does this place have cameras?” I asked Cezar.

  “There’s one at the gate, but not back here. That’s why we chose this place. Don’t want people seeing our business.”

  Fabulous. “That’s helpful. Not.”

  “Hey, don’t get attitude. How was I supposed to know you would end up trapped in here? It’s not every day I work with someone who isn’t in the business.”

  “Which is why you should be looking out for me. I don’t know what I’m doing.” It seemed obvious that he should be watching my back.

  But there was no point in laying blame at Cezar’s feet. Whoever had locked me in was clearly to blame, and possibly the one responsible for Cezar’s death.

  Cezar seemed to realize I was just freaking out. He sighed. “It’s going to be okay, kid. Someone will wonder why your car is sitting back here. Staff will come check it out and see your purse sitting on the seat. They’ll call the cops or open up the unit.”

  That did seem likely. “How will they know which unit to look in?”

  “The code at the gate is for this unit. They log when you enter and exit. It’s all on record. They’ll notice you haven’t left and think it’s strange.”

  “So I just need to wait until someone realizes something is off?” I was trying to think if anyone would notice I was missing anytime soon. My grandmother might try calling me again when I didn’t call her back. Marner would text me and think it was odd that I didn’t respond. But other than that, I wasn’t sure who would notice anything was off in just a few hours.

  “Yeah, hang tight, it will be fine.”

  “It’s so dark in here.” It was October. The sun had long since set and it was both cold and totally devoid of any light, except what was pouring under the door and from the one feeble bulb. It wasn’t exactly comforting.

  “While we’re here, do you mind checking on my cash?”

  “What?” I asked, distracted. I was concentrating on breathing through my mouth. Then it occurred to me breathing that way made the decomposition odor land on my tongue, which somehow seemed worse. I clamped my lips closed.

  “My money. The three million stashed here.”

  “In what?” I asked, bewildered. “The pockets of your swim trunks? I’m not digging in there.”

  “No, in some boxes in the back. I have false bottoms on some cases of lubricant.”

  “Lubricant?” I was picturing money rolled up into bottles of KY Jelly. That made exactly zero sense to me.

  “Yeah, for engines. It’s an aerosol can. I guess you don’t exactly know your way around a mechanic’s garage, do you?”

  “Nope.” I was glad I hadn’t spoken my lube thoughts out loud. He would harass and tease me endlessly. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to see to check it out though, and I don’t want to fall. Plus I’m worried if I leave the door I won’t hear if someone comes by.”

  “All right, fair enough. But when the door opens, let’s check before we leave, okay? You can deliver it to Daniel.”

  “Sure.” Whatever. I could care less about his ill-gotten gains. “Who do you think locked me in here?” I pulled the sleeves of my sweater down with my fingertips. My hands were getting cold.

  “There are only a handful of people who know about this unit. Me. Slade. Big Eddie. Sammy. My ex-wife.”

  “Any chance your ex-wife wants you dead?” That thought had never occurred to me. “Does she stand to get some insurance money when you die? I know that’s written in to a lot of divorces if the marriage was long term.”

  Cezar grunted. “Never thought of that. Yeah, she gets a quarter mil if I croak. But if she had me bumped off, because I honestly can’t see her pulling the trigger herself, why wouldn’t she be more concerned with filing a missing persons report?”

  “If it’s not her pattern to worry about you normally, why would she now? She would just look suspicious.” I was feeling the ex-wife angle. That seemed like a good suspect.

  “Then why would she lock you in here? Following you would be stupid.”

  Good point. “Maybe she’s not the one who locked me in. Maybe’s it’s her accomplice.”

  “Then who killed what’s-his-nut, the guy with my wallet?”

  Right. That guy. “I don’t know.” I could see my breath in front of me. “Do you think I can freeze to death in here? Or run out of oxygen? Or die from some sort of poisoning from decomposition gases?” My chest felt tight again.

  “You’re not going to die, stop it.” Cezar looked thoroughly unconcerned. “You’ll be out of here in two hours, tops.”

  That was a long time. One hundred and twenty minutes, to be precise. I needed to sit down. My shoulder was throbbing and it was dinnertime. My stomach growled, and it seemed insane that I could possibly crave food when it smelled like rotting flesh in there. I thought about praying but that seemed rude. I wasn’t exactly tight with Jesus these days, and I couldn’t expect to just pop in and ask for a major request without doing any of the prep work. I tried mental telepathy, an SOS to Marner.

  I briefly considered calling for Ryan, but he was in the same position as Cezar. His ghostly form couldn’t lift the door for me. I had a thought. “Wait, what if I’m dead and I don’t know it?”

  “You’ve lost your mind, kid. We would see your body next to mine if you were dead. Plus you wouldn’t feel cold. And you couldn’t touch anything.”

  True. I slammed my fist on the metal door just to reassure myself. “Ow. T
hat hurt.”

  “See? You’re alive.”

  I sank down to the floor, weary and relieved. I rested my back on the door and tried to think of a way to distract myself. I decided to be conversational. “Did you grow up here, Cezar?”

  “Came over at three years old from Poland. My parents were escaping communism.”

  “Wow, good for them. Land of opportunity, huh? My family came over in the early 1900s from Ireland.”

  “The hair and the freckles are kind of a dead giveaway on that one. Who are you named after?”

  “Bailey is my grandmother’s maiden name. You know what’s funny though? My sister is older and her name is Jennifer. That always pissed her off when she was a kid. She felt it was her birthright to have the family name.”

  “Why didn’t they name her Bailey?”

  “She was born with blonde hair. Plus my mother resisted. She wanted something distinctly female for her first daughter.” I rubbed my palms on my knees. “Then I was born with a shock of ginger hair and my dad got his way. I do actually like my name.” Bailey’s Irish Cream jokes aside. It gave me a sense of individualism. “Who were you named after?”

  “My dickhead uncle. That guy was a real prick.”

  “Clearly your parents liked him.”

  “I don’t know why. The guy wasn’t loyal to family at all. That’s key in this life, you know. Family first.”

  “Good philosophy. What’s second, money?” I was curious what he would say.

  “No. Philanthropy. Then sex. Money, fourth. Real estate, fifth.”

  Cezar always managed to surprise me. I don’t know what I thought he would say, but that wasn’t it. “That’s nice to hear. Giving back is a nice way to live your life.”

  “You’re a little gullible, you know that, right?” He eyed me shrewdly. His expression had changed.

  It was hard to see him that well in the dark, but I didn’t like his tone. A prickle of fear raced up my spine. Which was ludicrous. Cezar was a ghost. He couldn’t harm me. Besides, he was a gruff sort of guy, but all right. We had bonded. Hadn’t we? My head snapped up when I felt him shift closer to me.