by June Whyte
My brain, hooked on that resourceful wooden spoon, discontinued sending motivational messages to my extremities. So, not wanting to end up in a jellied heap on the floor, I lurched towards a hard-backed chair placed beside a scarred wooden table attached to an equally clichéd grey stone wall.
As I slumped onto the chair, Detective Turner of the fat gut switched the interview video to record. Scraped his chair in closer to the table. And then began talking.
And talking.
And talking…
No matter how hard I concentrated, none of the garbage spewing from the man’s mouth made a sliver of sense. And nothing I told him seemed to penetrate the thick layer of cement surrounding his brain. It got so I eventually tuned out his voice and entertained myself by watching dribbles of sweat descend from his forehead onto his hooked nose, run along the nose until they reached the point of no return, and finally plop onto the table in front of him.
“Did anyone else at the newspaper office have access to your copy?” asked DC Tate, the smaller detective, who at least had an open mind. Unlike Detective Turner who had me charged, convicted and fried to a crisp without a trial.
“Every one of the staff plus any number of people who came in off the street yesterday to ask questions, place an advertisement in the paper or deliver goods.”
“So, who would have emptied the trash after you screwed the paper up and threw it in the bin?”
“I guess that would be Alice, our receptionist, cum tea lady, cum cleaner.”
“But it was your writing on the sheet of paper,” interrupted Detective Turner. “It was you who wrote ‘shove something hot down the bitch’s throat.’”
At that I blew up. Just couldn’t take any more. My life was falling in tatters around me. My reputation at the paper was in the toilet. And I didn’t even know who of my friends I could trust anymore. Someone had framed me and it looked more and more likely that my “someone” wasn’t a stranger.
“How many times do I have to tell you I had nothing to do with murdering that woman?” I yelled and thumped the table with my fist to make my point. “Even if I had written that message—which I didn’t—at the time DF’s wife died, I was in bed. Hell, I was so drunk I was incapable of standing. Ask Simon Templar. Ask the staff at Erika’s Eatery.”
“Oh, we will Ms. Summers, we will,” drawled Fat Gut with a sneer worthy of the protagonist in Mean Girls.
His companion leaned toward me, still playing the part of Good Cop. “Mr. Templar is also answering questions in another interview room at the moment, and we have two constables at Erika’s Eatery right now, talking to the staff. If what you say is true you’ll be out of here very soon.”
Thank God for that. But would the detectives in the next room assume Simon was protecting me? Would the staff at Erika’s back him up? Would they tell the constable how many gins, how many types of cocktail, how many glasses of wine I’d consumed after my blind date went up in smoke? Would they remember me falling off the table while dancing the can-can and singing along to the juke-box version of “Yellow Submarine”?
This was turning into one of those ghastly free-falling nightmares experienced after pigging out on too much pepperoni pizza. Only yesterday I wrote my “Sex on Tuesday” column, as normal, answering a cry for help from a frustrated husband whose wife had lost interest in sex. And look where my expertise had landed me—the advice I’d given him twisted into a plot for a grisly murder.
And I was being treated as a suspect.
DC Tate shifted in his chair. “Before we go any further with this interview Ms. Summers, would you like a lawyer to represent you?”
“No. Why should I? I have nothing to hide.” I paused, sent a dagger-like glare in the direction of Detective Turner. “Shall I tell you again for the benefit of the tape and the hard of hearing? I don’t know who sabotaged my column. I don’t know who killed DF’s wife. And I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
If only I could go home, swallow more painkillers, pull the quilt over my head and sleep for a week.
“What about the woman’s husband?” I demanded, tired of being the fall-guy just because the police needed a suspect to cover their asses. “Or the kid who delivers her morning paper? Or the garbage collector? Any one of those people would have more of a motive for murder than I have.”
“There’s no need to get upset Ms. Summers.”
“Upset! Of course I’m upset! You’re accusing me of murdering a woman I’ve never met. I don’t even know DF’s real name or where he lives because all our correspondents write into the paper anonymously and then get filed under the initials of their non de plume. In this case, Distinctly Frustrated became DF.”
“We only have your word that you didn’t know the victim’s name and address,” persisted Detective Turner. “And in our game, that doesn’t cut any ice.”
“Let’s see,” interrupted DC Tate leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. “For the moment, we’ll assume the murderer was an outsider. The problem this scenario presents is, how did someone from outsider the newspaper office manage to sabotage your column?”
“Perhaps he or she broke into the office during the night, or hacked into my computer. I don’t know. I’m not the detective here.”
Baring his teeth at me, Turner snarled. “And don’t you forget it.”
“Now, Ms. Summers,” said DC Tate, ever the mediator. “Can you please walk us through what happens at the Tribute before and after you’ve written each day’s column?”
“Okay,” I agreed, massaging my temples with the tips of my fingers. “Firstly, I read the letters that come in and trash anything that’s either too sick or just plain yuk—”
“Such as?” A drool of spittle hung off the side of Turner’s thick lips as he leant forward across the table.
“And then I choose half a dozen of the most interesting letters to answer in my column each day.” I continued ignoring the interruption. “After that, I surf the net researching related material, read relevant articles in my many books on the subject, and finally consult with my co-researcher, Megan Starr.”
“Who?” asked Detective Turner.
“A friend of mine, Megan Starr. You wouldn’t know her.”
“The name rings a bell.”
“Megan, also known as Megan the Magnificent,” I went on, rolling my eyes in his direction, “was once a high-class prostitute. Any questions that are a little out of left field, Megan gives me the benefit of her vast experience. We discuss the letters at length and then collaborate on the most appropriate answers.” Pausing to get my facts straight, I bit down on my bottom lip. “Okay, then I scribble a first draft in long hand on scrap paper before transferring the entire column to a file in my computer. From there I email it to—”
There was a tentative tap on the door. While DC Tate strode across the room to answer the knock, his companion switched off the interview video. Then, with a burp and a sniff, he began to casually scratch under his armpits. For an encore, I half expected him to swing from the rafters while peeling a banana.
By now, my rear end had decided to go to sleep, so I shifted around on the chair in search of a comfortable spot. There wasn’t one. Like everything else in the room, police-issue chairs were made for intimidation, torture and confessions. The last thing on their agenda was comfort.
There was a mumble of talk going on behind the door and an occasional grunt, but although I pricked my ears and strained to catch the drift of the conversation, I couldn’t hear a damn thing.
What’s more, I needed to visit the ladies room again. This would be the third time since the beginning of the interview. Too much coffee, the depressing grey décor of the room, and Detective Turner’s continued aggression was doing a bang-up job on my iffy waterworks.
Standing, I dredged up a fake, I’m-so-sorry-but-I’ve-gotta-pee smile and trained it on my burping, stomach-scratching, curmudgeonly nemesis. Then, without waiting for his acquiescence, strolled towar
ds the interview room door.
Outside in the corridor, DC Tate and a hippy-type detective sporting a goatee beard and a buzz cut that emphasized the angular shape of his skull, were deep in conversation.
“I’m not trying to escape,” I informed them as both heads swiveled in query. “Just need another loo break.”
“Too much coffee?”
“Hey, are you like, a detective or something?” I said, giving DC Tate a cheeky wink. Couldn’t let him see how unnerved I was by this whole interview-the-murder-suspect thing.
However, before I could take another step, an ever-vigilant policewoman—tight smile, and even tighter uniform—attached herself to me like underarm hair. She must have been velcroed to the corridor wall; her job, to guard the interview room door and pounce at the first sight of my snub nose and dark bobbed hair.
“Hi again,” I said. For some weird reason the air in the hall smelt sweeter than the sweaty tension in the interview room. If I could keep Velcro Girl talking I might be able to delay my return. She nodded and then for the third time in the last hour we bumped together like dodgem cars all the way to the bathroom.
How much longer were they going to keep bombarding me with questions? What else could I say to convince them I had nothing to do with either the suggestion in my column or the murder? Every time I tried to think through what happened the effort short circuited my brain.
By the time we reached the end of the long passageway, I was almost at the stage of walking with my legs crossed. Damn that coffee. I’m sure I read in a Reader’s Digest somewhere that black coffee was the best treatment for a hangover. Not so. I’d had a gallon of the foul-tasting stuff and all it did was give me a bloated bladder. And as for easing my headache—large loose screws filed to knife points, still jostled around inside my skull. Their mission: to shred soft ouchy brain matter and shut down rational thought processes.
After taking care of urgent business, I adjusted the waistband on my tailored navy pants and pushed open the door of the stall. “So,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the prickly uniform standing at attention next to the automatic hand dryer. “You get a kick out of this kindergarten routine, do you? Or is it just a slow day at the office?”
“No fun for me, either.”
“Could have fooled me,” I told her squirting a generous amount of liquid soap on my hands before turning on the tap. “After all those years at cop school, I thought your first priority would be out on the street catching crooks and locking them up.”
“Who says I’m not preventing a crook from escaping now?”
I activated the dryer and warm air blew onto my wet hands. “Oh come on.” I sent an elaborate eye roll in her direction. “Do I look like a murderer to you?”
“What exactly does a murderer look like?”
Good question. How do you describe evil? Another good question: would a person need to be insane to kill? Or just plain black-hearted wicked? Who, in their right mind could tie a woman to a bed and while she screamed and writhed in fear, heat the point of a poker in the fire? Would the adrenalin crash through the roof when the killer jammed the poker into the screaming woman’s mouth? Would he jerk off after forcing the murder weapon down her throat?
I shivered as though I’d been spooked by a ghost.
Finding it hard to breathe, I cleared my throat before answering. “What about thin lips, crooked nose, piggy eyes, and a permanent snarl?”
She shook her head. “Not necessarily. We had a seventy-eight-year-old woman in here a couple of weeks ago with a face like a Christmas angel and a smile that said ‘walk into my parlor little children, and I’ll bake you a double-layered chocolate cake.’”
“Uh! Oh! Sounds like the witch in Hansel and Gretel.”
“Exactly.”
“Go on. What happened?”
“It was school holidays and because some local kids made a racket outside her house, this sweet old lady enticed a gorgeous four-year-old into her home and proceeded to feed the child poisoned sweets. Then, to get rid of the body, she stored it in her freezer.”
“I don’t think I want to hear any more.”
“Probably would have got away with it too, as we had the stepfather in custody for the murder,” she went on disregarding my queasiness. “But three months later, while in hospital for minor surgery, the electricity went off in Wicked Wilma’s house and a neighbor, investigating the overpowering smell coming from the freezer, discovered the grisly remains.”
Oooh, Jesus! I knew there was a reason I didn’t want to hear any more. Yet, based on the innocent-seeming people who came through here, how far-fetched was it for the police to believe maybe I really did either kill DF’s wife or I was an accomplice? What if, when I returned to the interview room, they charged me with murder? Threw me in a cell? What if “innocent until proven guilty” had been abolished at the last Senate meeting? My overworked heart, pounding away behind my chest cavity, started banging wildly on the door wanting to get out.
“And if you’d met this old dear in the street,” my guard went on, seemingly ignorant to my growing panic, “you’d have likely helped her carry her groceries across the road. So, as the saying goes, you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
“You didn’t let her escape did you?” Perhaps escape was the only way I could get out of here.
“No way. Wicked Wilma was handcuffed to me 24/7. Even when she took a dump I stood right beside her. Stunk like the evil shit she was, too.” She smiled and her eyes told me she knew exactly what I was thinking. “Hey, don’t worry. Just keep sticking to the truth. I have built-in radar when it comes to evil and you’re okay.”
I let out a sigh that felt like it came from deep down in my shiny red Target boots. “Thanks.”
Bathroom duties completed, my shadow led me back to the interview room, opened the door and nodded. “See you around.”
“Not if I can help it, you won’t.” I grinned. “And hey, just for the record, I think you do a great job.”
“Good luck in there.”
My heart pounded as I shuffled across the floor, but the moment my rear end hit the unforgiving wooden seat on the offender’s side of the interview-room table, I knew I was off the hook. No fire and brimstone. No vile accusations. Not even a thumbscrew or a pair of handcuffs in sight. Detective Turner sat slumped in his chair, thoroughly pissed off, his eyes burning a hole in the floor, his mouth screwed up like a constipated dog’s behind.
“You’re free to go, Ms. Summers,” said DC Tate sliding a DVD from the recorder and tucking it into a labeled container. “Your statement checked out.”
“Hallelujah!” I let out a loud sigh and jiggled my chair away from the table.
“That doesn’t mean we’re through with you,” put in Detective Turner with a grunt as I stood up. “You gave your readers irresponsible advice that incited a murder. So do not leave the state.”
With a mock salute, I reached for my bag. “Thanks, guys. Fun talking to you. Any time you’re passing by the Tribute, feel free to drop in for a cup of coffee. I might be able to help sort out your sex life.”
Noting an agitated tick pumping away on the left side of Detective Turner’s jaw, I consciously forced my feet to saunter slowly towards the door—when all they really wanted to do was run like hell.
5
Tuesday, 1:58 p.m.
The no frills clock, high on the police-station wall, informed me it was almost two o’clock when I closed the interview room door behind me. I’d been incarcerated in that room with my insensitive inquisitors for an hour and a half. Seemed like a month.
Free at last to let go of the knotted muscles holding my head high and my fake smile in place, nausea churned at my stomach and I began to shake. Okay, take it easy, I told myself. Everything would be fine once I vacated the building.
The heels of my boots click-clacked in tune to the staccato rhythm of my heart beat as I hurried towards reception. With every step I took, Turner’s last words plagued my mind, wou
ldn’t let go. Was I really responsible for that woman’s death? Had I given the killer a horrific idea for murder? Shove something hot down the bitch’s throat. But how could I be to blame? They weren’t my words!
So the only way to clear my name was to find out who sabotaged my column. If I could do that, I’d know the name of the murderer. But did I really want to know the name of the murderer? Especially if he knew that I knew. Oh my God, this was all too scary.
I pushed my fear to the back of my brain and into the basket marked, ‘Hard Stuff’, and thought about my friend, Megan Starr.
By now, Megan, likely pissed off because I didn’t show up for lunch, would have left the restaurant and gone shopping. When things didn’t go Megan’s way, shopping for designer label shoes was her stress relief. Jimmy Choos. Keds. Dolce & Gabbanas; take your pick. For her, trying on and buying shoes with a high price tag was like trying out and buying the most expensive drinks in the bar…without the resultant hangover.
With any luck, she’d ring the Tribute to find out what was keeping me. If so, I bet Alice, the receptionist-cum-tealady, cum-cleaner, was happy to paint a graphic picture for her. A picture of me cuffed and dragged protesting to a police car. An exaggerated picture embellished with screams, fist fights, and the presence of multiple large police-issue firearms.
Alice, known as the office witch, had high hopes of taking over the “Sex on…” columns when her stepsister, Daisy Mae, died. Some even suspect she slipped a bone into Daisy Mae’s steak sandwich. When I was promoted to writing the column, Alice probably made a voodoo doll in my likeness and stuck pins into it every morning. Can’t say I’ve ever felt anything, though. Okay, an odd twinge in my knees when I bent them to sit in my chair, but that was nothing to do with voodoo and all to do with playing hockey until I was forty.
If only I could go home, wash the clinging institution smell from my body, curl up under my doona and sleep for a week. But of course, that wasn’t an option. Not yet. Not with this black cloud of suspicion hanging over my head. First, I had to catch a cab back to the office where I’d left my car, rearrange a time to meet Megan, write a disclaimer for tomorrow’s column…and talk to Simon about what happened in the early hours of this morning.
