by Clare Kauter
That cosy little moment – James tending to my burn, me drawing a moustache on his face, both of us giggling like little children, jazz playing in the background – is when Karen Martin walked in.
Carrying a gun.
Fuck.
Chapter Sixteen
Karen Martin looked back and forth between me and James, from his hands on mine, to me painting his face, and then back to our hands again. She looked ready to murder, and not just because she had a gun in hand. Her eyes were crazy. Even crazier than I’d seen them before.
“What exactly is this?” she asked.
“Cupcakes,” I said. “Want one? They’re really nice. I think you’d –”
“Shut up!” she screamed.
I did.
“Karen,” said James slowly, measuredly. “Why do you have a gun?”
She was fuming. “I saw her car parked outside so he lent me a gun just in case. She’s been snooping around. She was getting to close to us. And too close to you, James. You’re mine.”
OK, psycho alert.
“Who lent you the gun, Karen?” asked James, slowly letting my hand go.
“Don’t move!”
“Just putting my hands on the counter, Karen. I don’t want to stand here holding Charlotte’s hands, OK? I’ll keep them where you can see them.” Charlotte? Oh god. She took a deep breath, still looking suspicious, then finally nodded. We both put our hands down on the bench. I really hoped James had some sort of plan. “Who lent you the gun, Karen?” he asked again.
“Who do you think?” she asked.
“The Rodent?” I guessed.
“Don’t call him that!”
“She didn’t mean anything by it, Karen. She just doesn’t know his real name.”
“Yes she does. She’s just being rude!”
“No she doesn’t, Karen. She doesn’t know anything. She hasn’t figured it out yet. I told you she wouldn’t be able to, remember?” Oh, thanks James. Well, I got a lot closer than anyone else. I totally pegged Karen for this shit. “What’s wrong, Karen? What can I do?”
“Nothing,” she hissed. “I thought you were a good person, but you’re not at all. I stuck up for you all this time. He said we should let you take the blame and I said we shouldn’t and after all that, you get with this bitch.”
“We’re not together,” I said.
“Shut up,” said Karen and James together.
“We aren’t together, Karen,” said James. “We’re not even friends. You know that.”
“I’ve caught you in the middle of a date! She keeps coming over! He’s been following her for days and you keep spending time together! I thought…” Her voice broke. “You’ve just been laughing at me this whole time!”
“No, Karen,” he said. “You’ve got me all wrong. You and I, we’re friends, right?”
Bit odd, James claiming to be friends with a crazy homicidal woman in her mid-thirties, but whatever. I guess he knew what he was doing. Police training or something.
“I thought we were, but he said –”
“Karen, you know me. Better than anyone.” Smooth talker. A second ago I’d thought maybe I fit that bill, but here we were. Crazy Karen was his new bestie. “If he’s said that I’ve been misleading you, he’s wrong.”
“You’ve never even asked me out!” she cried. Oh, wow. Is this what my crazy McKenzie-obsessed friends were going to be like in 15 years? Yeesh. I should talk to Will about getting them some counselling…
“I didn’t think – I didn’t realise that’s what you wanted,” he said. “You never gave me any signs.”
“You – you didn’t know?”
Oh my god, was James actually just going to be able to sweet talk the crazy bitch out of killing us?
“I had no idea.”
She looked like she was softening, but then she straightened back up. “Well what’s she doing here, then?” She gestured at me.
He rolled his eyes. “She just wouldn’t leave. Look at how she’s dressed – she came over here and tried to break in, demanding we go on a date. She’s a bit weird in the head, Karen. She’s not reserved like you. She’s not really my type.”
And he had the gall to claim he was heartbroken over our cancelled wedding. I mean sure, I knew he was just trying to calm her down, but still. He knew I’d been on my way somewhere when I stopped. As if I’d dressed like this for him.
It was working, though. Karen was lowering her gun.
That was, of course, until another figure stepped into the room.
“He’s sweet-talking you, Karen. He doesn’t love you. He loves her. We have to kill them both.”
My jaw had dropped so far open I’m surprised it wasn’t grazing the floor. There, in the flesh, was my worst enemy apart from Karen, egging the deranged bitch on.
It was The Rodent.
The JM in the email.
A man who had access to McKenzie’s house at any time thanks to his sister’s cleaning contract, giving him somewhere safe to send his ‘business’ emails from.
Jeremy Martin.
Oh, god. How was I going to tell Lea about this?
Maybe I’d be lucky and I’d die so I wouldn’t have to.
Wait – Lea. She’d been at all those sporting events with James, cheering the teams on. And of course, her (weird, ten years her senior) boyfriend would have tagged along. And done some light murder on the side. A homicide-line, if you will. I knew now was not the time for puns. But if I was about to be shot, I was going to go out with a bang. OK, I’m done now. I promise.
“What the fuck,” said James, echoing my thoughts exactly. Well, some of my thoughts. The other thoughts included Was the green van he’d been chasing me in the Gregory’s delivery van? Did I spend four years working for a hit man? I should have been paid more for that. What now?
“They’re together, Karen,” said Jeremy. “He loves her.”
“He really doesn’t,” I said.
“Shut up,” all three of them said at once.
In the distraction caused by Jeremy walking into the room, I’d managed to drop my hands off the bench and I was now subtly trying to go through my pockets.
Fuck.
Where the fuck was my mobile?
In the car, of course. James’s mobile was off in some other corner of the house hooked up to speakers and playing the jazz that was now to provide the ironic backing track to our deaths.
At Last by Etta James came on.
Of course.
What a tune to die to.
“Jeremy, you don’t have to do this,” said James.
“I do, actually,” he said. “I’ve already accepted a down payment.”
I’d always wondered how he managed to drive such a nice car and own such a nice house running a dive like the grocery store. I’d assumed it was his disregard for workers’ rights and use-by dates. Now it was all clear – it was hit money.
“Who’s going to take the blame if I’m dead?” asked James.
“Well, you see, we’ve already planned for that.” Oh goodie. “You see, you’re going to kill Charlie, and then filled with uncharacteristic remorse (and, can I just say, undeserved remorse – of everyone I’ve killed, Charlie, it’s you’ll I’ll kill most gladly)… Anyway, filled with remorse at having bumped off your childhood sweetheart, James, you’ll kill yourself. It’s all very neat, really.”
All very neat. Everyone would believe it, I was sure. Even Tim.
Not Will, maybe. Or maybe he would believe it. Oh my god, don’t let Will think that this was his fault.
“How long have you been planning this?” I asked. I didn’t really know what I was meant to do, but keeping Jeremy talking seemed like a good idea.
“Planning to stitch James up? Not very long. Not until I’d killed his uncle and the all the pieces just seemed to fit so neatly together. So many happy coincidences. Larry will have to go to gaol, of course. You’ll be blamed for all the deaths, James. And I’ll retire. So will Karen. And we’ll live
a good life.”
“Why did you kill all those people?” James asked. I think he wanted to keep them talking, too. Buying ourselves time.
“Money, of course,” said Jeremy. “Good money. Larry Jones was my best customer – bumping off people all over the place to fix up his dodgy deals. People started to get so scared of him that they’d just do what he asked – sell for next to nothing, pay him protection money, the lot. He payed me a lot and I made him a lot more.
“That was until your uncle got wind of it, of course. Started sniffing around, asking people questions. He was going to uncover Larry. He was going to going to uncover me. Larry paid me to whack him off and Karen came along to help.”
“I didn’t want to!” she said. “But James, Jeremy explained how much better your life would be without your uncle around. You’d have so much more money. I knew it would make you sad, but it worked out in everybody’s best interests.”
“Except Frank’s,” I said.
“Frank should have known better than to stick his nose into someone else’s business.”
“It was his business,” I said. “Larry just wanted to buy him out so that he could keep running it in the dodgiest way possible without anyone finding out!”
“Well, basically, yes,” said Jeremy. “We were going to try to help James out – let his alibi live, you know – but then he started running around with you, Charlie. Breaking my sister’s heart. After all these years he’s been leading her on…”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“Charlie,” James said quietly, trying to warn me off.
“No, it’s bullshit. He was going to kill James the whole time, Karen! He’s making all this up. James and I aren’t together. Jeremy has been planning this – he’s always planned to set James up for it. Jeremy doesn’t care about your feelings. He’s just doing this for himself. For the money.”
Karen started shaking her head at me, a bit too slowly to be convincing. “N-no,” she said. “He wouldn’t do that. He cares about me.”
“Of course I do,” said Jeremy, flashing me a smug look and trying to put his arm around Karen. Unfortunately for him, Karen caught the look and pulled away from him. “What –”
She raised the gun and pointed it at his head. “You’ve been lying to me?” she whispered.
“No, Karen,” he said. “No!”
“But it can’t all be coincidence… You’ve been trying to set him up. You knew that I loved him and you still set him up to take the rap for it!”
I looked at James. He glanced back at me. I knew we were both hoping for the same outcome from this little family feud. Never had I thought I’d be on Karen’s side in an argument.
They were yelling back and forth, Karen getting more irate and crazy, flailing the gun around a little too much for comfort; Jeremy trying to back away from her while convincing her that he hadn’t been planning to kill James the whole time.
I guess Karen’s flails got a little too wild, because suddenly the gun went off and shot one of the cupcakes to my left. I screamed and James pulled me down behind the counter. (I landed relatively injury free, apart from a bleeding nose caused by hitting the edge of the counter. Luckily, most of it was going on the apron, though. Just a little splash on the dress.) Just before we’d ducked down I saw Jeremy run at Karen to try and get the gun off her. Suddenly there were more bangs and lots of voices shouting. I was confused and terrified and had no idea what was going on. The room was swimming and my nose hurt and I wasn’t getting enough air.
After a lot of deep breathing I could make out McKenzie’s voice telling me that it was OK. Looking around, I realised that the house had been stormed. The room was flooded with cops. Jeremy and Karen were both, unfortunately, unharmed, but they were taken away in cuffs, screaming at each other.
James led me outside for some fresh air. I wasn’t good at coping with all this hit man shit. After a few deep breaths of the cool night air, I was feeling a little better. McKenzie was stroking my back, which was comforting. I looked over and realised he was still wearing only his boxers.
“Shouldn’t they give you a blanket or something?”
He just smiled and pulled me in for a hug. I heard someone coming up behind me and turned around – Tim. He hugged me as well.
“Honey, you are so fucking dead,” he said.
“I’m not even!” I said. “I’m alive!” I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was just genuinely in awe of that fact.
He laughed. “Are you OK?”
“Yes!” I said, then thought for a moment. “Well, actually, I burnt my finger on the cupcakes. And hit my nose.”
He just shook his head.
“How did you know to call the police in?” James asked Tim.
“Lea called the office when Charlie didn’t show up to their weird ‘find her a husband’ party. Charlie wasn’t answering her phone so Lea was worried that the guy in the van might have gotten her. When we checked her car’s GPS, we found she was here. To be honest, we thought you might have done something to her, James.” Tim looked embarrassed now saying this. “Sorry, bud, but we did, so Panther and I rode over to check it out. We noticed that the green van was parked on the street so we ran the plates and found out it was Jeremy Martin’s. From there we just sort of put the pieces together and I called Joe. He organised the cops. We were all waiting outside when we heard a shot and stormed the place.” He turned to me. “What the hell were you thinking, coming here?”
“It’s lucky I did,” I said. “Or James would probably be dead and no one would know it was Jeremy. Plus we wouldn’t get paid.”
“I guess,” said Tim. “What were you even doing here?”
I looked at James. He looked back. What could I say? “Baking cupcakes?”
Tim stared at me for a moment before shaking his head. “I’m never going to understand you.”
Tim left to go and call Adam and talk to some cops, so James and I were alone.
“Are we allowed to eat the cupcakes now?” I asked.
“I think they might object to us consuming the crime scene,” he said.
I nodded. Probably. Looking around, I couldn’t believe how many cops there were around the place. It was slightly terrifying. I guess you need some manpower to take down a hit man. “There are so many cops here,” I commented.
“Yeah,” said James.
“What if Karen and Jeremy hadn’t turned up?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, what if they’d stormed the place and we were just inside banging?”
Suddenly I realised what I’d said and tried to hide my embarrassment. A grin was spreading over McKenzie’s face. “Imagine that,” he said.
“No,” I said. “And you stop imagining it too.”
“I can’t. That’s going to be in my head forevermore.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be.”
“That dress isn’t helping.”
“Then I’m never wearing it again.”
He looked me dead in the eye. “In my head, you never wear anything else.”
Chapter Seventeen
The capture of notorious hit man Jeremy Martin and his crazy sister Karen was all over the television for weeks. They weren’t talking, and there wasn’t that much concrete evidence against them, so for a while the case was looking a bit sketchy. After all, it was just our word against theirs that they’d confessed, and after they lawyered up it looked like they might just end up with the possession of an illegal firearm charge. (I know, right? Well done, justice system.) Michael Andrews still seemed to think James was responsible for the murders and that I was, for some reason, covering for him.
Andrews was definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed.
Luckily, however, a bunch of date-stamped photos somehow ended up in police possession, which showed Jeremy stalking various people who later ended up dead. The photos Adam had taken while he was investigating Jeremy for Lea. Well played, Adam Baxter. Well played.
Dodgy business
man Larry Jones was arrested in relation to a series of less than legal activities, and McKenzie came out of it all as the hero – he lost a close family member, was dragged across the coals by the media, then was set up by the real culprits, and in the final act, was nearly killed before finally triumphing over the villains and bringing them to justice.
Well, more or less.
Lea and I didn’t see much of the news coverage, though – we were too busy moving into our new house. Luckily, the damage to the kitchen was minimal; the cupcake had taken the brunt of the force. It was probably for the best that we hadn’t tried to eat it. Any cake that can withstand a bullet is maybe not the kind of thing you want to snack on.
You might be wondering why exactly we ended up getting the house, seeing as we hadn’t really solved the case – I just happened to be there when the murderer walked in and confessed. Well, I think James felt a little bad that I’d nearly been killed because of him, and maybe kind of guilty that when he’d tackled me out of the way of the bullet I’d nearly broken my nose, so we compromised. (I know! We were acting like real adults!) He’d given us the money, and now we were renting the house at a greatly reduced price.
Lea took it surprisingly well, the whole ‘ex husband is a hit man’ thing. It did mean that her divorce was going to be a little messier, but at least he was in prison so the chances of him killing her to get out of losing his estate were minimal.
Once Jo Riley learned that I hadn’t just ditched the party and was, in fact, detained by a homicidal maniac (or two), she decided to organise another mate-finding soiree, this time held at my own house so there was no way I could escape. So that was where I was now. I’d worn the pink dress again, figuring that no one here had seen me in it before so I could probably get away with it. I hadn’t actually had time to wash it, but who was going to know? Sure, there was a little blood on it from my nosebleed, but it just looked like another polka dot from a distance.
As the party got underway in the backyard, I stood at the kitchen counter, drink in hand, thinking back to the other night. Not to the ‘nearly getting murdered’ bit so much, but to the ‘baking terrible cupcakes and acting like friends’ bit. Friends, what a weird idea. It hadn’t been weird at the time. He’d been so nice – not cocky like normal. Maybe I liked him better depressed. Eek. I’d be a terrible girlfriend. Wait, what? I didn’t mean that. Never mind. Moving on.
