by Harper Lin
I tried to think of what to do. I couldn’t see well enough to know whether it was a person, although I couldn’t think of what else it might be. It wasn’t moving toward me. It wasn’t moving away from me. It wasn’t moving in any direction at the moment. I didn’t even know if it was facing me at all. I didn’t know if it could see me.
The shadow moved farther out from the house. It was definitely human. I could tell by the way he or she walked. The shadow moved farther this time, stopping directly in my path. It had to see me.
A sickening feeling came over me. What if I had been completely wrong about Abraham Casey’s murder? What if it was random? What if this was his murderer striking again? Would Matt find me dead in the Williamses’ yard when he came to find out why I hadn’t brought Latte over yet? Oh God, what if the person hurt Latte?
I still hadn’t moved, keeping my eyes fixed on the shadowy figure. I thought about my options. The Williamses’ house was closest, but it was dark. If no one was home, no one could help me. I could try to run to Matt’s house, but I would have to run past the figure. The shadow was far enough ahead of me that it would certainly catch me, even if I tried to run around it. I could run back to my house. But the door was locked, and unlocking it would kill any head start I had.
My only choice was to run for the street and hope Latte followed me. I would scream. The evening was early enough that the old folks on the street would still be awake and would hear me. They could look out their windows and see me running down the road, which was illuminated by the streetlights. They would call the police. I would run to Main Street if I had to. Eventually, someone would see me. I would run until someone saw me.
I tensed all my muscles, getting ready to make a break for it while trying not to let the figure see which way I was going. I counted down in my head. Three…two…one...
“You just couldn’t stay out of it, could you, Fran?” The figure spoke. The voice was familiar, male, but in my panic, I couldn’t place it. I didn’t run. I tried to speak, to apologize to the figure for getting involved, to beg him to leave me alone, but the fear paralyzed my vocal cords, and nothing came out.
“You just couldn’t leave well enough alone.” He took a step toward me now. I stepped backward, not wanting to let him get any closer than he already was. He kept coming toward me. “You had to tell everything to Mike, had to go running your mouth to him. I should have known better, but I didn’t realize quite what a little tattletale you are.”
His long legs were bringing him toward me faster than I could back away. His walk was familiar, too, as was the way he carried himself. His identity flitted around my brain but wouldn’t stop long enough for me to catch it.
His arm moved to pull something out of his jacket pocket. I heard a nauseating click that I had never before heard in real life, only on TV: the sound of a gun safety clicking off. “It’s too bad, you know.” He stepped quickly toward me. “I always liked you.”
And then I knew who it was. I recognized the laid-back tone of the voice, now tinged with aggression, and the casual swaying walk that suddenly seemed so menacing.
“Chase, please, you don’t have to do this.” I finally found my voice.
“Oh, I don’t? You’re about to bring the law down on me, and I don’t have to stop you? That’s where you’re wrong.”
“I didn’t tell him it was you! I swear! I didn’t even know you had anything to do with it! Why would I think that?”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes! You have to! It’s the truth!”
“I may be a criminal, but I’m not an idiot, Fran.”
He was an arm’s length away from me now. I had to do something, or I would be another case file on Mike’s desk.
I did the first thing that came to mind. I kicked him. Then I hit him, just the way we learned in kickboxing class—plant your feet, twist with your hips, drive through your first two knuckles. I kicked him again. I screamed with each blow just like our teacher had taught us.
Chase was stumbling back now, likely more surprised by the attack than he was injured by it. But if surprise was what I had going for me, I was going to use it.
I kept coming, hitting and kicking. I heard the gun fall to the ground with a thud. I heard Latte barking frantically. I kicked Chase again and landed another punch. I remembered something I should have thought of sooner and, with my next kick, planted my foot firmly in his groin. He fell to the ground, clutching himself. I kicked him again to make sure he wasn’t faking it. Latte ran past me toward Matt’s house then flew back my way, barking all the while. He circled me then took off toward Matt’s again.
I looked at Chase on the ground and tried to figure out what to do next. If I ran, he might get away. Instead, I planted my foot on his throat with just enough force to make sure he knew it was there. He whimpered but didn’t move.
Latte made another lap, and I felt in my pocket for my phone to call the police. I came up empty-handed and realized I’d put it in my purse, which I’d dropped at some point in the confrontation. I opened my mouth to scream for help, but before I could make a noise, Matt’s front light came on, and his door opened.
“What the hell?” He stopped as he caught sight of me standing over Chase with Latte barking furiously in his face.
“Latte, hush!” I commanded. Latte stopped barking but kept a low growl going in Chase’s direction. I looked at Matt, whose bewildered expression I could see in the light from the house. “Could you call the police? And, if you can, could you let Sammy know I’m probably not going to make it to our girls’ night?”
Chapter 20
Three nights later—a week to the day after our first attempt—we finally managed to have our girls’ night out, which had expanded a little from our first two attempts. The group of us—me, Sammy, Matt, Dawn, the guy bartender from the Sand Bar, Mike, his wife Sandra, and Ryan—had taken over the back deck at Fiesta Mexicana. Appetizer plates were scattered across the tables, intermixed with bowls of chips, salsa, queso, and guacamole. We each had drinks planted in front of us: beers for Matt, Mike, and Ryan; tequila shots for Dawn and her bartender friend; and margaritas for Sammy, Sandra, and me.
“I’d like to propose a toast!” Dawn announced, lifting her shot glass in the air. Bartender Guy raised his glass with her, and the rest of us quickly followed. “To Sammy! To her freedom and to second chances at celebrating it.”
“Um, third chance,” I corrected her.
“It only counts as the second because you guys didn’t invite me to the last one!” Dawn said in the exact same tone she’d used for the toast. “To Sammy!” she repeated.
“To Sammy!” we all echoed and took a drink.
Dawn nudged me. “Your turn,” she said.
I looked at her in confusion, but she gave me a “hurry up” look, so I raised my glass. “Uh, to Dawn! For arranging this night out!”
“To Dawn!” everyone repeated.
Dawn looked at Matt. He thought for a minute then raised his glass again. “To Mike! For not arresting my girlfriend for beating the crap out of a guy!” We drank.
“To good times with good friends!” Sammy offered without prompting.
“To Cape Bay!” Ryan declared.
“To Fran, for catching the murderer!” Sandra said. I blushed. Mike rolled his eyes, but I saw the hint of a smile on his face as he glanced at me.
“To not having any more murders for Fran to meddle in!” Mike toasted, his slight smile breaking into a grin.
“I can drink to that,” I muttered.
Dawn nudged Bartender Guy next to her when it became clear he wasn’t going to realize it was his turn. “Go!” she hissed.
“To tequila!” he said, and we drank. “Excuse me,” he said, standing up. “I gotta hit the head.”
I watched as he left the patio then leaned over to Dawn. “Hey, what’s his name?”
“You don’t know?”
“You didn’t introduce him.”
“It’s Dave.”
“Ah, okay.” I gestured back and forth between Dawn and Dave’s empty chair. “Are you and Dave, uh, seeing each other?”
Dawn made a face. “No, Dave’s gay.”
“But I saw him flirting with all the girls at the bar the other night.”
“You get better tips when you flirt.” She smirked.
“I guess that makes sense.” I leaned back in my chair.
“You get better service when you flirt, too,” she said as the waiter came out with another round of drinks. “Thank you, Javier,” she cooed then smiled and batted her eyelashes a couple of times.
“I brought you some empanadas.” He set the plate down. “On the house.”
“Aren’t you the sweetest!” Dawn looked at me knowingly as he walked away. “See, I told you.” She took a bite of empanada.
I shook my head and took an empanada before offering the plate to Matt.
“So, Mikey,” Dawn said a few minutes later after Dave had returned from the restroom. I saw Sandra’s eyes get big as she glanced at Mike. Clearly, she was just as surprised as I had been the first time I’d heard Dawn call him that. Mike narrowed his eyes a little bit in Dawn’s direction but otherwise let it go. “I know Chase killed the guy in the alley, and Franny beat the snot out of Chase, but there’s a lot of other things in that story I don’t know. How about you fill us in?”
Mike glanced around the table then shrugged. “It’s not like it won’t be in the paper soon enough anyway.” He inhaled deeply then blew out a breath. “So, we’ve known for a while—”
“Wait, who’s we?” Dawn interjected.
“The Cape Bay Police Department,” Mike said sternly, apparently not fond of being interrupted. I almost wanted to warn him that it would probably not be the last time Dawn jumped into the middle of his story, but I had a feeling that would come as no surprise. “So, the Cape Bay Police Department has known for a while that there were drugs coming into town—I told Fran this back before we made the arrest. Pharmaceutical stuff, mostly painkillers, but some benzos and barbiturates.”
“Some whats?” Dawn asked.
Mike took a breath. I guessed he was resisting the urge to say something unkind to her. “Benzodiazepines and barbiturates.” Dawn looked at him blankly. “Valium and sleeping pills.”
“Oh, okay,” she said. “Go on.”
Mike took another deep breath. “It’s been fairly steady for a while now, but there have been some spikes and drop-offs here and there. Most recently, we confiscated some during an arrest that the lab said were so long expired they were basically placebos. Sugar pills!” he added before Dawn could say anything.
“I knew that one.” She smiled, and I saw Sandra stifle a giggle.
“Anyway, we knew the drugs were coming in from the outside, and, at the quantities we were seeing, they weren’t just people with legal prescriptions selling off the individual pills. This had to be organized. There had to be a source—a drug manufacturer or a sales rep—or as it turned out in this case, a pharmacist. The Boston PD is still looking into how Casey managed to get the quantities of drugs that he did and move them through his pharmacy without alerting the feds to what was going on. But he was the source of the drugs, and Chase Williams was the local dealer. The kingpin, really—he sold them all down the coast and out on Cape Cod. Those rich kids apparently have quite a taste for this stuff.”
“How did Chase and Casey know each other?” I asked, risking the wrath of Mike.
“Good question!” Mike said. Dawn shot me a dirty look for getting Mike’s approval on my question. I gave her back my best teacher’s pet smile. “It turns out,” Mike continued, “that Casey used to work in the same hospital as Chase’s sister Cheryl. Cheryl took Chase with her to a holiday party once before she was married, and that’s when he met Casey. They’ve been working together for years now. Chase used his work at the salon as a front—no one would ever question him singling out a special bottle of ‘shampoo’ for a customer or giving them a sample of a product. He’d put the pills in a baggie and slip them into the shampoo bottle or the sample container, and the customer would pay him cash or include it in his tip. Apparently, he was really good at cutting hair, so no one thought twice about him making a lot in tips.”
Around the table, the women nodded. “If I wasn’t married to his arresting officer, I’d say that losing Chase as a hair stylist is a real blow to the community,” Sandra said. Mike looked at her as though he thought she had lost her mind. “But I am married to him,” she rushed to say, “so I understand fully how important it is that he’s off the streets.” Mike nodded and looked away from her. She leaned back in her chair so he couldn’t see her, made a sad face, and wiped a mock tear from her eye. Sammy, Dawn, and I all looked away so Mike didn’t see us laugh.
“Anyway, I had mentioned that the worthless batch had been circulating around town. Chase realized that it was bad, and when Casey came to deliver the next batch, Chase confronted him about it and told him that he wasn’t paying this time since he’d paid the last time and gotten a bad product. Casey refused, they argued, then they parted ways. The next day, Chase came looking for Casey for another attempt at ‘negotiations.’ This time, he brought a gun to try to be a little more persuasive. Casey still wouldn’t back down, and Chase shot him. Says it was an accident, but I’m not so sure about that.”
“What was with the suicide thing?” Dawn asked.
Mike didn’t even seem to flinch at this interruption, now engrossed in telling his story. “Chase knew that Casey had lied to his wife about where he was going. He knew Casey had hooked up with Suzy from the Sand Bar the night before. He figured there was enough evidence along those lines to make suicide plausible, as long as no one looked too close, so he put the gun in Casey’s hand and walked away. Why he thought we wouldn’t do an autopsy or check for gunshot residue, I don’t know. As long as he kept his drug trade going, you’d think he’d be a little better at covering up his crimes, but I guess his incompetence is just something for us to be grateful for.”
“So, did you know it was him before he attacked Fran?” Matt asked.
“Not a clue. We were pursuing other leads. We might have figured it out eventually, but I can’t be sure. If he hadn’t attacked Fran, he might have got off scot-free.”
“Why did he come after me?” I asked. “I never told you anything about him. I thought it was the wife.”
“Apparently, he saw you talking to me after your haircut the other day. I guess he’d just offered you some pills and thought that you were ratting him out. He thought that if we came after him for that, the whole thing would come crashing down on him, so he decided to eliminate the witness.”
“Even though he thought I’d already told you what happened?”
Mike shrugged. “Criminals don’t always think the clearest.”
“Suzy’s going to be mad that her drug supply’s dried up,” Dawn said.
“I’m sure she’ll find a way to get them,” Mike said. “There’s too much of a demand for stuff like that for the supply to dry up for too long. All we can do is keep it off the streets the best we can.”
We all sat and let Mike’s information sink in.
“So,” Sammy said thoughtfully, “Fran really is kind of responsible for the case getting solved. If she hadn’t gotten involved, you might never have figured out who the murderer was.”
“We would have gotten it eventually,” Mike said.
“But you solved it faster because of Fran.”
“Civilians should leave police business up to the police.” Mike cast a look in my direction.
“I can’t help that I get curious!” I said. “I just saw that souvenir bag and knew there had to be something more to the case. And then Mary Ellen told me about the marzipan and—well, who buys marzipan without planning to eat it? That stuff is delicious!”
“She has good instincts. You have to give her that,” Ryan said.
Mike shook his head
and looked at me. “And I don’t care how good your instincts are. I’m not inviting you to work on a case any time soon.”
“She was helpful, though, wasn’t she, Mike?” Sandra prompted.
He looked at Sandra for a second as though she’d just shared with all of us what kind of underwear he preferred. She smiled a lovely smile at him. He turned back to me. “You were helpful, even if it was by accident.”
I smiled at him, accepting his indirect compliment. I knew better than to push my luck.
“I think I’m going to sign up for Fran’s kickboxing class on Monday,” Sandra said.
“I’ll get you a gun,” Mike said.
“Chase had a gun,” I pointed out. “I just had a few kickboxing lessons and a lot of adrenaline.”
Mike grunted.
Our conversation faded into silence.
Matt took my hand. “I’m glad you’re safe,” he whispered and lifted my hand to his lips.
I smiled at him and took a sip of my margarita. It was perfect. It was served on the rocks, just the way I liked it. Between that, the cool salt air blowing in off the water, and the friends surrounding me, I didn’t think I could be any happier.
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Recipe 1: Marzipan
Makes 12 ounces
* * *
Ingredients:
• 1 ½ cups almond flour/meal
• 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
• 2 teaspoons pure almond extract
• 1 teaspoon food-grade rose water
• 1 egg white
* * *
Pulse almond flour and sugar in a food processor until fully combined with no lumps. Add almond extract and rose water. Pulse again to combine. Add egg white, and process until a thick dough is formed. If the dough is still wet and sticky, add more sugar or ground almonds. If the dough is flimsy, it will become firmer after refrigeration.
