The Mia Quinn Collection

by Lis Wiehl

  Sometimes being an electrician was like being a detective. If a neutral wire was loose, it could cause crazy problems in the rest of the house. The trick was finding it—it could be in the switch box, an outlet, a light fixture, the attic, the panel, at the meter, or even out by the city. You had to think logically and test your assumptions. And working with electricity could be dangerous. Even deadly, if you didn’t know what you were doing.

  So why was this guy here? Why did he already know so much about Warren? He must be the mob or something. All right, Warren knew the mob was Italian, and this guy didn’t look Italian. But still, he looked dangerous.

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I don’t think we want to go there, do we, Warren?”

  “But what if everyone else votes guilty?”

  “That doesn’t matter. Just keep saying you don’t think he’s guilty. If you stick to your guns, they can’t force you to say anything different.” He slid over a paperback. It was a thriller about a hit man. “And here’s a little food for thought.”

  After he left, Warren found ten one-hundred dollar bills tucked in the middle of a scene where the hit man took out a juror who refused to cooperate. He got the message.

  It hadn’t been easy. In the jury room, they had all yelled at him. Warren had just gone to that place he had started going to when he was a kid and his parents were fighting. Or when they were mad at him over something he had broken. Turned their voices into white noise, like an ocean. When the real Warren was tucked away inside, safe. It had only hurt a little when that pretty girl, Naomi, had gotten so mad at him.

  He wasn’t a dummy. Had Leacham killed that girl? No doubt. But she was dead. There was nothing Warren could do to bring her back. He had looked up online what would happen next. If Warren stuck to his guns, there would be a hung jury, and the prosecutor could refile the charges. Meanwhile, Leacham wouldn’t dare do something like that again. Not when he would go to prison. A man like that—how long would he last in prison? He was soft.

  Warren finished buttoning his shirt, then tried to fluff his hair just the right amount. He checked his phone for the time and swore. Song might already be there. She had wanted to meet him there, which he guessed was smart. Someone who looked like she did had to be careful. He slipped on his coat and hurried out of his apartment.

  He saw her as soon as he walked in the door, as pretty as he remembered and even more petite, despite the high, high heels. She had already ordered a pitcher of beer, and as he slid in across from her, she handed him a glass. She kept pouring, and soon she was ordering another pitcher.

  With every sip, Warren let himself relax. He bounced his feet, more or less in time to the music. Finally he coaxed her out onto the floor and started swiveling his hips. For as pretty as she was, she wasn’t that good of a dancer. Jerking her limbs, her face a mask behind those plain black glasses that just made her look sexier. It made him feel protective. She was clearly as nervous as he was. Had been. Because with every glass of beer he felt a little more sure of himself.

  Finally during a slow song, she leaned closer. And closer. Until he felt her lips grazing his ear.

  “Tell me a secret,” she whispered. “Tell me a secret nobody knows.”

  CHAPTER 32

  SUNDAY

  Bo drifted up from sleep. Where was she? She was lying in a warm bed, her breath slow and rhythmic. She sniffed. Why did the sheets stink of cigarettes?

  She jerked fully awake. With difficulty, she pushed herself up on one elbow. Her left hand, which had been curled under her cheek, was asleep, as dead as a fish. She flexed her fingers, trying to get the blood flowing, then pushed herself up a few inches farther.

  Warren was behind her, his body spooning hers, fast asleep with his face half mashed into his pillow. He didn’t stir.

  It came back to her now, how they had ended up back here, at Warren’s apartment. Warren had been so drunk he was stumbling. Bo, on the other hand, had been clear-eyed and clear-minded. Willing to do whatever it took to get Warren to confide in her.

  He had wanted more than kissing and fumbling, but he had also been so intoxicated he could barely walk, let alone get his thoughts straight enough to try to persuade her to have sex. In the end they had fallen asleep on his bed, cuddling.

  In her sleep, Bo’s body had forgotten who he was. What he had done. Betrayed her. She had a sense memory of curling into the sheer animal warmth of another body in bed. They had slept entangled, as innocent as two puppies, but she should have been watchful. Awake. While he was sleeping, she should have slipped out of bed and searched for evidence.

  The sheets were pale blue. They seemed clean, and she was grateful for that. Only partially covered by the top sheet, Warren was wearing a wrinkled white shirt, blue plaid boxers, and socks that were both black but of different lengths.

  Bo was still fully clothed except for her shoes and coat. But what had barely covered her when she was standing upright and tugging it all down or up into place was now doing a less than adequate job. Her special glasses were on the bedside table.

  Last night Bo had thought Warren would confess. “Tell me a secret,” she had whispered in his ear on the bar’s dance floor. Waiting until he was so drunk he could barely keep to his feet. He was swaying from side to side, nodding his head, shuffling in place and letting his arms swing in what she guessed he thought passed for dancing. Bo hadn’t gone out dancing since she was young. And she hadn’t been young for years and years. “A secret no one else knows.”

  “You want to know?” he slurred. “You really want to know?” A musky perfume surrounded him like a cloud. Sickeningly sweet, but not quite enough to mask the smell of his cigarettes. And underneath, the sharp, earthy scent of his anxious sweat.

  “Yes.” She only had eyes for him, for this man with the ugly hair and the sad eyes. It was only later that she realized that if he had told her something, the recording device hidden in her glasses would probably not have worked. Not with the din of the band playing and the other patrons’ shouted conversations.

  “I like you.” He grabbed her wrist and looked deeply into her eyes, his own eyes almost comically wide. “I really like you.”

  And then Warren planted a wet, slobbery kiss on her mouth. Beer and cigarettes and cologne, all right under her nose.

  She had had to bite her tongue to keep from heaving.

  The thing was, she had thought he might really have been on the verge of saying something. That he had considered it, but he hadn’t been quite drunk enough to think it was a good idea.

  Now she slipped her glasses back on.

  “Hey, Song,” he said softly from behind her. “So you’re awake? Good morning, gorgeous.” He patted the top of her hip and then let his hand rest there.

  She forced what she hoped was an appropriate smile on her face and rolled over to face him.

  “Hi,” she said softly and reached out to push his ridiculous two-tone, two-length hair out of his eyes. She should be grateful he hadn’t tried anything while she slept. Although watching him wake up, smacking gummy lips, softly groaning as he put a hand to his head, it was clear that he might not have been capable of anything.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve had anyone up here,” he said. “And never anyone so beautiful.”

  That wasn’t much of a surprise. For an answer, she giggled. Bo had done that a lot last night. A giggle bought her time to think, to craft the right answer. Sometimes it distracted Warren enough that she didn’t have to answer.

  He rolled away from her and grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the night table. The table was a giant wooden spool that must have once held wire.

  “Do you mind not smoking?” She hated the smell.

  Warren put them down. “Sure, babe.” She could see his desire for a smoke warring with his desire for her. “If it bothers you.”

  “After I met you yesterday, I googled you, you know,” she said.

  “What? You did?” He looked ple
ased. And also nervous. “What did you find?”

  “Your Facebook page, for one thing.” Warren had sixty-seven friends. “But mostly I found articles about a trial that just ended. You were on the jury.”

  He looked away from her, running a thumb over one eyebrow. “Yeah, that was a tough case.”

  “What was it about? I don’t really follow the news.” What would she reply if he asked what she did follow? But Warren kept silent, so Bo added, “I didn’t really understand it.”

  “The case was about a girl who died. She worked in a massage parlor. But she did a lot more than give massages, if you know what I mean.”

  He was looking at her with his head tilted, so Bo nodded to show that she did understand. Her heart was a stone.

  “She got into a fight with a customer. He said she tried to rob him, that she held a knife to his throat. The prosecutor said the customer was the one who brought the knife and that he was the one who attacked her, not the other way around. Both of them pretty much agreed that there had been a struggle and the girl ended up getting stabbed. She died. The customer said it was self-defense and the prosecutor said it was murder.”

  “According to the article, you thought he was innocent.” Bo tried not to let any heat show in her voice. Inside, she was crackling with anger, but she kept her voice soft. “You were the only one.”

  “No. I voted that he was not guilty. There’s a difference.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to talk about that now. Not when I’ve got such a pretty girl in my bed.” He moved closer. “Here, let’s take off those glasses. We don’t need them getting in the way.”

  He reached out before she could stop him, his fingers pinching the hinges as he pulled them free. “Hey, these things are heavy!”

  Her heart stilled, a bird trapped in the cage of her bones.

  “Why in the world do they weigh so much?” His eyes narrowed.

  The words came to her, saving her. “Because I have a strong prescription.”

  He turned the glasses around and put them on his own nose. He squinted as he scanned the room. Then he turned to Bo, his features bunching together. “How come if you have such a strong prescription, everything looks exactly the same when I put them on?”

  Bo opened her mouth to explain.

  She just didn’t know what she would say.

  CHAPTER 33

  It was a Sunday morning like any Sunday morning. That’s what Marvella Lott would later tell the homicide detectives. At least it was until the stranger walked in.

  When he came in, Marvella was still standing outside the doors to the chapel, holding her stack of programs. Church was about to start, and no one had come in from the street for the last couple of minutes. Richard, the other greeter, had already gone in, complaining that his hip was killing him today. On the other side of the swinging doors, Abigail Endicott started playing the melody of the choir’s first hymn.

  Marvella was just about to slip into the chapel when the visitor walked in the church’s main doors.

  She didn’t recognize him. His bald head reminded her of a peeled potato. It was topped with a wide-brimmed white knit cap. He was a big man, more muscular than anyone she had ever seen. A chest as broad as a tree trunk. Not young, not old. Dressed in an open jacket that didn’t look warm enough for the weather.

  In the chapel, the choir started into “Our God Is a Great God.”

  “Would you like a program?” Smiling, she held one out to him.

  The man didn’t put out his hand. Didn’t even really look at her. He just kept walking forward, looking almost mechanical. Had she not spoken loudly enough? Marvella’s smile wobbled a bit.

  “They’re free,” she said. Sometimes new immigrants or people who had never been to church were reluctant to take one, afraid there would be some kind of quid pro quo.

  She glanced down at his hands as she waited for him to reach out for one of the programs. His gloved right hand began to reach inside his jacket as he walked past her. But what was that under the jacket? Tan, leather—it looked like a shoulder holster. A snake uncoiled in her belly.

  Marvella’s eyes flashed up to the stranger’s face just as he swiped his left hand down from his forehead to his chin, flipping the brim of his hat inside out. The hat had now become a white balaclava mask, covering everything but his eyes. The nose was marked with two dark dots of yarn, and more black yarn had been used to make it look like the mouth had been stitched shut. The stranger now looked like a ghost or a skeleton. Something dead and reanimated.

  And what was he now holding in his right hand? It was small and black. No, she thought. No, please, God, I’m not seeing this. It wasn’t a Bible, like so many of the other congregants carried. It was a—

  “Gun!” Marvella screamed from behind the stranger as he shouldered open one of the swinging doors. She felt her heart unzip. “He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!”

  Instead of running outside to the relative safety of the street, or at least barricading herself in the office, Marvella let her pamphlets fall to the floor and followed him inside. Later some of her grandchildren would lecture her for her foolhardiness, and others would praise her bravery. When it hadn’t been either. It just had been the desire to see.

  What happened next passed with a curious, dreamlike slowness, even though it was over in an instant.

  At the sound of Marvella’s shout, some congregants hunched their shoulders and froze in their pews. As if they thought if they stayed absolutely still, no one would notice them. Others began screaming and running toward the other exits, scrambling over people who were too slow or too stuck.

  In a nearly empty row, Derron Phillips scuttled forward on hands and knees, the pew back providing him with a partial shield. Gayle Oliver tried to climb right over John Kim, but when the toe of her high heel got hooked on his thigh, she fell headlong, tumbling in between the pews. Meanwhile John never moved from his customary seat in the third row on the far left, never even blinked as Gayle fell over him. He only had eyes for the gun. Not the man holding it. Not Marvella, scurrying in his wake.

  Marvella was praying now, mixing snatches of the 23rd Psalm with bits of the Lord’s Prayer and other half-remembered verses. “Lord Jesus, protect us, save us from violence, even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we fear no evil, O Lord, deliver us, you are our refuge, you are our present help in times of trouble.” Her mouth was dry and chalky, her thoughts as disjointed as her prayer. A little girl, Hannah Lee, had appeared by her side. Marvella had no idea where Hannah had come from, but she put her arm around her, steadying herself as much as she steadied the girl.

  Toward the front of the room, Abigail was taking shelter in the overhang of the keys. In the first pew, Hu Shen was on her feet but not moving, her hands pressed against her mouth, her head turning from side to side as she tried to figure out the best course of action. Brett Rockwell, who was always talking about new fad diets, had gotten stuck half under a pew, his feet madly paddling as he tried to scoot his bulk underneath. Chrissie Proulx was stabbing at her cell phone, but Marvella knew in her bones that whatever was going to happen would be long over by the time 911 was able to send cops here.

  As he walked, the stranger began to raise the gun.

  “What do you want?” Pastor Bob managed to say. Because of his microphone, he had an advantage, and his words rang out even over the screams and shouts and panic. His voice caught only a little. Afterward, they would all agree about how brave he had been.

  The man didn’t answer. He just kept moving forward, as inexorable as a tsunami.

  Pastor Bob stepped out from behind the lectern. His arms were open, his hands empty. To Marvella, he looked like Jesus in one of the stained glass panels that was set in the wall, the one where he welcomed the little children to come to him.

  Pastor Bob slowly stepped down the blue carpeted stairs. One, two.

  “Whatever is wrong, we can talk about it. We can work this out. Let’s just go somepla
ce quiet.” He spoke as if there weren’t bedlam and chaos around them.

  The man veered off. Away from Pastor Bob and toward the choir.

  There was a mad scramble among the few people left in the choir stall. Sheet music flew in the air. Metal stands were knocked over with a clang. Jennie Wood whimpered and raised her hands as if in surrender. A man—Marvella thought it was Steward Steele—shouted.

  The stranger stopped, then raised his left hand and wrapped it around his right to steady it. He braced himself.

  His first shot took out the flower arrangement on top of the piano. It shattered into dozens of shards of vase, water spraying out, the flowers scattering in all directions. The sound roared and faded.

  The second shot hit Abigail, who was still cowering underneath the keys. Her body jerked, then uncurled itself. Slowly, slowly, she sprawled back on the carpet. Her dark wig came off, exposing the vulnerable bones of her skull topped with thinning white hair. Blood, red and shiny as paint, spread from the point where the bullet had entered her skull.

  The stranger froze as if he himself was shocked by what he had done. He turned on his heel, unleashing a fresh round of screams. Marvella pushed Hannah behind her. But he paid no attention to any of them. As he strode quickly toward the door, he let the hand with the gun drop to his side.

  As he was leaving, Pastor Bob ran to Abigail and fell to his knees. He leaned over her, speaking quietly into her ear, holding her hand, gently stroking her bloody head.

  But Marvella could see that it was too late for Abigail to hear him. Too late for Abigail to hear anything.

  CHAPTER 34

  Hey, Mia,” her dad said as she slipped in beside him on the pew. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” From his other side, Luciana leaned forward and offered a shy smile.

  Mia answered with nothing more than her own smile, not sure how much of the truth, if any, she wanted to offer. Last night she had been unable to sleep. What was going to become of Gabe? Would he really stop using? How much of a price would he end up paying for those muscles of his?