by Mary Malcolm
“John, Lucy ain’t told me much about you. Do you come from a good family? Money?”
“Oh my God.”
He flushed and cleared his throat. “I’m from a normal family, I mean…” He turned to me, as if for help.
“John has to get going, Aunt Dolores.”
“She’s right. Lucy, we’ll talk on Monday.” He took my phone and tapped in his number. “Give me a call when you’re feeling better.”
“Thanks,” I said, holding back my groan. Not saying we’d have had sex today, but between a murder last night and Dee killing the mood today, I didn’t think I’d ever experienced so much coitus interruptus before in my life.
“Ma’am, Dolores…Dee, it was nice meeting you. Y’all have a good day.” He practically ran to the door, and, as it shut I shoved a pillow over my face.
“Aunt Dolores!”
“What?”
“You don’t ask people if they come from money!”
“What? I shouldn’t look out for my only niece? What if he’s some guy who thinks you got money and he wants to get his hands on it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have money!”
“He don’t know that.”
I screamed into the pillow again before getting up and walking away.
Chapter Three
The interrogation room grew colder so Officer Len stepped outside to turn up the thermostat. When he returned, he brought me a lemon-lime soda and a bag of potato chips.
“Thanks.” I appreciated the gesture after an extremely hard day.
“So let me get this straight,” he continued. “You agreed to work for Officer Reyes as a consultant at that point…”
“Yes.”
“…but you didn’t ask for paperwork or to talk to the captain or anything like that?”
“I didn’t think I had to. I knew I’d be working at my own job and reporting back to Eli anything out of the ordinary. Basically, as he explained it, I’d be getting paid for doing exactly what my brain does to begin with.”
****
By Saturday, my cough cleared and I’d returned to mostly normal, which meant nothing would keep me from returning to work Monday. For the first time in my life I was happy to go to work, and thinking about using my ability didn’t make me want to hurl. I was a sleuth right out of a novel and dressed accordingly in a brown corduroy skirt, cream-colored tights, and a fall glam cardigan. It was about as girly as I’d looked in a long time, and, of course, Aunt Dolores thought it was for John. Okay, maybe I dressed up a little for him, but I’d never tell her that.
“I’m just saying, it ain’t bad that you’re dressing up for a boy.”
I gulped down my coffee, rubbed my eyes, and tried to reason with her. “For one thing, even if he was more than a friend, he’d like me how I am, not dressed as someone I’m not. For another, I wouldn’t try to dress up to impress anyone. That’s not honest.”
“Honest, schmonest. We try to impress people every day. Clothing is the least of the costumes we wear to hide our true selves from the people around us.”
She was right. We all wear masks, and I’d grown up knowing that. My parents hid so much from me that even at twenty-two I still didn’t know them. Thinking about them for even a moment made me ache for more time together.
The day they disappeared I’d been doing something I wasn’t supposed to. I’d trekked three miles to the river and swam by myself. Sure, they’d told me not to go on my own—there were bears and moccasins and all sorts of dangerous things that could kill and no one would know. Still, I had to pull a Houdini.
All because of a boy. Clint. The grandson of one of the only neighbors my parents talked to, and the only person close to my age I actually knew. We were able to hang out a little, and I found him fascinating. He didn’t read as much as me, but he knew so much more about the world. We had exactly zilch in common.
We did kiss, though. My first kiss.
It had been wet and unpracticed. I closed my eyes when it started because that’s what I’d seen in movies, but kept them closed as we continued because if I opened them I would have giggled at how weird it all felt.
His hands laid awkwardly on my waist at first, then moved to my ass. I’d wanted to be kissed, not felt up like livestock. After a few more minutes I couldn’t take it; I ran away. All the way to the river. I jumped in to cool off, not caring if I got in trouble for swimming alone. I’d rather face the unknown dangers of the river than the scariness of being with a handsy boy for the first time.
That’s when I saw him. The dead guy.
At first he looked hurt, so I went over to help. “Sir, are you okay?” I pushed on him, but his body only bobbed like an apple in a bowl of water. My stomach clenched, and I threw up.
It took a moment for it to fully register that he was dead. I scrambled to the side of the river, then couldn’t do anything but stand there and scream.
I’d screamed so long and loud that the people who found me thought I’d somehow known the guy. The police were called, and an ambulance for me because of my state of complete shock.
From what I understand, the police went to my house and told my parents what happened and where to find me. They never made it to the hospital.
My parents disappeared because of me.
****
At HGR everyone talked in hushed voices about Mr. Winters. Some of them not as hushed. A girl who’d never talked to me before—even though she worked two chairs down—whispered loudly as I tried to log into the system.
“Did you hear?”
“Yeah.” I tucked my purse into a drawer. “Sad. He was a nice guy.”
“You knew him? I’ve been here three years and never met him.”
I smiled thinly, not sure I wanted to talk about this with her. “Strange.”
“I’m Natalie Cole, like Nat King Cole almost.” Her vintage-style dress masked some of her plumpness but did nothing to hide her diminutive frame. Natalie had thick black bobbed hair and light green eyes. If her ears had been pointy, she would have reminded me of an elf.
I introduced myself. “I’m Lucy Carver. Doesn’t he have a daughter named Natalie?”
Her eyes brightened. “Hey, if we’d gone to high school together, we might have sat next to each other, you know Carver, Cole?” She completely ignored the bit about her name. Probably too excited about the high school seating chart.
I laughed. “I suppose.”
“I went to Lincoln Heights, you?”
“Cromwell Academy.” Or at least that’s where I went after coming to live with Dee. I went there with Ana. Thinking about her again reminded me of how much I needed her.
“Oh.” Her face fell a little. I’m sure Natalie would have loved to have found a class chum. Still, I doubted we would have been in the same grade, anyway. She looked at least a few years older than me. “So you said you knew him?”
Since I was supposed to be investigating this, I figured why not start here? “Yeah, I met him last Wednesday. So weird. He seemed like a nice guy. I can’t imagine why anyone would have wanted to hurt him. Then again, isn’t that the same thing they say about the serial killer who lives next door?”
Natalie shook her head. She reached back into her cubical and grabbed her phone. “Listen, I got a tweet from Stan up in HR, who said Danny in receiving told Sue from accounting that there might have been an investigation going on about Mr. Winters, but they’re still going to have a memorial for him on Saturday. Do you want to go?”
“No, probably not.” I figured it was only right. I mean, I needed to investigate the guy, but this was a memorial for his family and the people who actually knew him. I didn’t want to be some strange gawker who showed up because of how he’d died.
“Me, neither,” she said, blasting me with a bright white smile that would have made Shirley Temple look like a grump. “It would be weird, right?”
I smiled right back. She wasn’t bad; perhaps we could be friends.
****
I talked to Natalie a little more off and on that day, and by that evening it felt like we’d known each other forever. We’d graduated high school the same year, but she was two years older. She’d started school late and then been held back a year when she was thirteen due to excessive absences. We were both stood up for prom, both received our driver’s licenses late. The best part about Natalie was she did most of the talking. For once in my life I didn’t have to tell her anything about my past or my weird beginnings. She didn’t seem to care.
As long as someone listened, Natalie could happily go on forever. Which is how we ended up at Tango Tacos that night.
The place had a trendy twenty-something vibe, but an eclectic crowd. It boasted of SOL food—Sustainable. Organic. Local.—which, of course, brought everyone from ageing hippies to hat-wearing hipsters along with a wide variety of people who lived within walking distance. It helped that the restaurant had also been featured on a Food Network show, had truly tasty dining, and a live band every night of the week.
“So you’ve been dating Clive off and on for how long?”
“Mmm. Two years. It was between him and this other guy. I thought Clive was too soft, but the other guy turned out to be a real jerk and I decided to give ‘soft’ a chance. Best decision ever.” She swallowed a bite of fish taco and without much prompting wiped the sauce from her mouth. At least she knew the universal signal.
I thought about John. That cute dimple, those oh-so-kissable lips. We hadn’t talked much during the day and he’d wanted to hang tonight, but I liked Natalie and it wasn’t as if I had an overabundance of friends.
Besides, distance and the heart and all that.
“Two years is a long time,” I said, taking a slow drink of my margarita. It was a lot stronger than I was used to but delicious with pieces of blackberries mixed in. “Why no ring on it?”
“He said he’s not ready. You know how guys are. Always have a plan, always have somethin’ else they’re goin’ for, I don’t know. He said it’ll be soon, but he needs to get things worked out first.”
“Things like what?”
Her laugh came out nervously as she played with her straw and took a keen interest in the table at our right. “Who knows?”
She’d told me Clive worked in Central Processing, which was another reason I’d wanted to go to dinner after work. It was my next stop in the investigation and the only real lead I’d gotten from Mr. Winters, so to have an “in” in the department would make things all the easier.
The only problem was I had no way to know whether Clive was in on whatever was going on. I couldn’t take a chance letting him know I might be on to him; it might stop things entirely, or worse, put me in danger. It didn’t seem likely anyone knew about the details of my meeting with Mr. Winters, but I couldn’t know for sure.
Over sopapillas I decided to finally pop the question. “So about Clive. I know you love him, but have you always?”
“Oh sure,” she said, honey drizzling from her sopped-up piece of bread. “He’s a real sweetheart. We work together, but I actually met him through a friend.”
“Who?”
“Diana. She used to work for us. She left about a month before you came on board. Worked in your cubical, come to think of it. Strange, left a note one night when her shift ended saying she wouldn’t be back. No ‘I quit,’ no exit interview, no goin’ away party, or anything.” Natalie paused to take a bite, catching a drop of honey moments before it dripped onto her chest. “Anyway, she introduced Clive and me at her annual Halloween party one year, and we’ve been Twinkies ever since.”
“Twinkies, huh? That’s cool. So you went to her party every year?”
Natalie finished her meal and tossed her garbage in the trash on our way out the door. “Naw. I’d never gone before. Never wanted to. She’d been so insistent, and boy am I glad.” She smiled widely. “Imagine, someday I’ll get to be Mrs. Clive Brewster.”
I’d yet to meet Clive and certainly couldn’t judge him before I checked him out; still, I had a sinking feeling. A party she’d never been to with a coworker she didn’t spend much time with, and she happens to meet her soulmate who doesn’t want to settle down until things are “done.” Plus, the now-absent Diana worked my job only a month before me. The dinner had been wonderful but left me with so many more questions than answers.
****
I agreed to meet Detective Reyes for coffee the next morning before work. At seven o’clock I walked into The Jumping Bean, a small coffee house off Magnolia in the Hospital District, and ordered a latte and a muffin.
I sat at a table in the back and took a few minutes to go over what I’d discovered yesterday… approximately zilch.
I’d decided the night before that if Diana and Clive were involved, they’d excluded Natalie from their plot. She didn’t seem the type. She’d told me about the orphans she’d been helping in Nigeria. How she’d received an email requesting her assistance and just couldn’t turn it down. Much too sweet and trusting. Which is probably why they’d picked her. For what, I still hadn’t figured out, but the whole story of how they’d met came across a little hinky.
Detective Reyes showed up at 7:15 on the dot dressed in navy slacks and a white shirt, wearing a bold blue tie. He dressed as impeccably as he had every other time I’d seen him, and an odd twinge scraped at my belly as he ordered his coffee and flirted with the barista, a girl around my age with blonde hair and freckles. I frowned as they lingered a few moments too long.
“Good morning,” I said, in the most civil tone I could muster when he finally came to sit down.
“You look like you didn’t sleep well.”
“I slept fine.”
“Huh.”
I took a sip of my pumpkin spiced latte and forced a smile. Didn’t sleep well, my ass. The man came to talk shop and instead gets all flirty with the barista? It made no sense why I felt so territorial, but I did. “So anything new with the investigation, Detective?”
“You can call me Eli.”
“Not going for professional today, eh?”
He smiled casually and leaned back in his chair. “We’re colleagues in a way. Feels a little strange having you call me detective.”
Colleagues. I liked the sound of that. Despite all possible reasoning, he appeared to be accepting me, brain craziness and all.
“I mean, we’re not actually colleagues, but I’d still like you to call me Eli. Do you mind, Lucy?” He leaned in when he said the last part and placed his hand on mine.
I pulled back my hand as if it burned. Was he flirting with me too? I couldn’t figure it out. He’d acted so gruff when I first met him, then so argumentative at the house. This is the thing I hated about my ability. It worked great for things I didn’t need to know, but when it came to simple human language, like whether a guy was flirting or not, I was clueless.
In Eli’s case I decided it best to cut to the chase. “Since we are colleagues, you should know I’m in a relationship.”
“Okay.”
“Sort of. John. The security guard.”
Eli flashed an I’m-way-better-than-that-guy kind of smile. “You mean the scrawny kid at the reception desk?”
My hackles rose at his obvious insult. “He’s a nice guy. And he’s not scrawny, he’s slender. I’m slender. You’re just big. And your shoulders are too wide.”
His laughter sounded nothing less than smug. “Whatever floats your boat, Lucy. The kid looks like a stiff wind would knock him over.”
I huffed. “Are we here to talk about John or the investigation?”
“You brought him up.”
Crossing my arms, I waited for him to either apologize or keep going.
“Fine.” He pulled a folder from his briefcase and took a sip from his steaming cup of coffee. “We’ve talked to everyone in accounting, and they all had alibis but one, and she didn’t have a reason to stand out.”
“Names?”
“Can’t give you those.”
Well, that chapped me. “How am I supposed to compare what I have with what you have if I don’t have names to work with?” As I bit into my muffin, some of the crumbs slipped into my bra. Great, more for later.
From the look on Eli’s face, he hadn’t missed the descent, either. Still, he had the decency to look up after only one ah-hem, which was nice.
He folded the papers together, stuffing them back into the folder, and pulled out a notebook. “You’re unofficial right now. I can’t give you information because none of this is being released to anyone outside the department. If that changes, I can fill you in, but until then, I’m afraid it will be a one-sided dialogue.”
I started to open my mouth to argue when he interrupted.
“Why does it matter anyway? You get paid the same regardless of what I give you. You’re getting paid for what you give me.”
Which squashed the argument. “Clive Brewster. I hope he’s not involved. He’s the boyfriend of a coworker, and he works in Central Processing. The only information Mr. Winters gave me on the day I talked to him was that department, so I’ll be starting there.”
“And what makes you think Brewster might be involved somehow?”
I explained to him about the party and the meeting. Also my suspicions about Diana.
“So, really, you don’t like the way they met, or the fact that he hasn’t proposed so you’re throwing his name out there.”
Why, why, why had I agreed to be a part of this? I could have left HGR, gone on to find a job at some coffee shop, like the flirty barista here, and started my life over. Again.
Thinking about Dee, I reminded myself I have to take care of her now. I took a deep breath. “You know what I do, how I don’t forget things. Well, it also makes me have strong gut instincts. Diana had my job before me. If Clive and she were trying to slip something through data entry, wouldn’t they need someone to pin it on in the end?”
“Makes sense. Anything else?”
The numbers changed. The day I came back I’d noticed but hadn’t wanted to tell Eli yet. I don’t know who swapped them out, but all the numbers from this week added up. I’m sure his analyst would figure out the same thing in no time, but if he held things back, I figured I should too. Besides, if I could track down the person who changed the numbers, I could maybe trace who killed Mr. Winters. “Not yet,” I said. “But as soon as I have something, I’ll give it to you.”
