Whatever Doesn't Kill You (An Emma Howe and Billie August Mystery Book 2)

by Gillian Roberts

  “Don’t use that voice like you’re talking to a raving lunatic! I’m not crazy, David! I’m just sick and tired of this life, of you!”

  “Why?” He whispered, but not because he was afraid of annoying her, and not even to keep her calm. He whispered because if he let go of any part of himself—even his voice, his vocal cords—then he was likely to let go altogether and kill the screaming woman.

  “Don’t play dumb. I know about your lies. I know what you’ve been doing. You take me for a fool, don’t you? You think I’m too stupid to pay attention and see what you’re up to? I know about you, David!”

  His heart stopped. For a minute he was dead. How could she? But better he didn’t ask what she meant, didn’t plant ideas.

  Still, she kept doing this. Hinting, all-but-saying, driving him up the wall. And Marlena had mentioned that she’d been in the office while he was gone. Wanted to check an insurance policy, she said. Went into the files, for God’s sake. Not that anything was there, but what did she want? What was she looking for? What did she know?

  Nothing, he told himself. She knew nothing. All of it, her hints, the file cabinet, all of it was one long fishing expedition. Her sickness, her craziness, that was all it was.

  But he was sick of this. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “Well, it isn’t my period, if that’s going to be your next sexist, stupid question,” she snapped.

  He nodded. And waited some more, finally seating himself on one of the tall stools at the kitchen counter. She paced, alternately sucking on the cigarette she held in one hand and the thick tumbler of red wine in the other until, finally, he’d had it. He stood up.

  “So don’t tell me, then,” he said. “Throw a fit, then clam up so nobody knows what’s going on or how to make it better. The truth is: I don’t need this crap. I work myself to death to provide you with everything—look around you—everything! And then I come home to this? Well, no more. You can go to hell, Jeannie. I’m leaving. That should make you happy, finally.”

  She stared, her nose reddening, her eyes flooding, as if he’d attacked her, done something horrible to her. As if he’d done one single thing! “Who is she?” she asked in a raspy whisper.

  She?

  “Tell me! I deserve to know.”

  A woman? Another woman? That’s what she thought?

  There wasn’t any other woman. Not in this time zone. He wasn’t that stupid. Away from home, it was different. All rules off, but there was no way in hell Jeannie knew about one-night stands halfway around the world. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He looked at his house, this carefully put together glass-and-shingle cube she loved so much. Quiet, safe street, good schools. A swimming pool, a gas barbecue, a hot tub. How many people had such things? Tennis courts, golf links not far away. Everything she wanted, and then some, and she didn’t lift a finger outside the house. If she had any sense, she’d shut up and be grateful.

  “For starters,” she said, pausing to light another cigarette and drag deeply on it. “I am sick,” she said after she exhaled. “Physically sick from your lies about needing to travel.”

  “What lies? Business travel is not a lie.” She was definitely insane. Maybe he could have her committed, for real. Or had they changed the laws about that, too. Did she have to agree to it?

  “You travel for a moving company? A second-rate moving company?”

  “What’s wrong? You’re not living well enough? Did I walk into somebody else’s house just now? You don’t like your bread and butter anymore? You’d rather live on the streets? Can the insults. My company is not second rate. We don’t need a fancy front, money wasted on a flashy office. We have a reputation, which I work to keep up. We’re specialists!”

  “You’re changing the subject. People with moving companies don’t have to travel for business, except the van drivers, and you aren’t one of them.”

  “Listen to me, Jeannie Vincent, you don’t know squat about business. You think I just sit in that office in Sausalito and people trot in and fill out forms for me? Well, I’ve got news for you. In the worlds I work for—art and music, international moves, special items moves, the things most moving companies don’t touch—you have to publicize yourself. You have to go to conferences, to industry shows. Take booths, promote what you do. You have to sometimes go to somebody’s out of town house or a museum or whatever to estimate the cost of the objects—”

  “That isn’t true. There are cooperating agents.” She said it as if she’d memorized it. “I know that, because I called your office and pretended to be somebody else and I asked, you filthy liar.”

  “In general, right,” he said. “If you called, you want to move an ordinary household, then that works that way, but what if you own—” Then he stopped. Why was he wasting breath? “What the hell are you doing making a call like that? Checking up on me? What kind of attitude is that? What kind of—”

  “You’re a liar! You sneak around, spend your nights in motels, and I’m supposed to take care of the kids and take it? What kind of way is that to treat me?”

  “It’s business!”

  “Monkey business!”

  He took a deep breath. “You are out of your mind.”

  Her hair looked lumpy, twisted, as if she’d forgotten to brush it today. “I’m not dumb, you know. I thought for a while it was that girl. Maybe it was, in fact. Probably was. The one before this one.”

  “I’ll bet you think you’re making sense.”

  “That girl who got killed. The one at Blackie’s Pasture.”

  “Tracy Lester? Why her? Where do you get your—”

  “Because I have eyes. I saw her go into your office for a very long time, and she wasn’t ordering up a special moving job, was she?”

  “She was probably hanging out with the other girls in my office. She worked across the street.”

  “No. She was in your private office.”

  His mind turned her words over, looked behind them, reread them. You couldn’t see into his private office from the street, so where had she been? Or else she’d seen Tracy enter the outer office, then tracked her and saw that she was no longer visible. But in any case, Jeannie was tailing him, goddamn stalking him and for how long? She was crazier than he’d understood. “You still think I had a thing with Tracy? And you’re mad now, so you think maybe I’m spending my nights in the coroner’s office, still carrying on with her?”

  “Don’t talk that way about the dead.”

  “Then don’t talk that way about me! Do you know how precisely and exactly stupid you are, sneaking around and checking up on me like a madman in a horror movie? You’re so stupid I can’t believe it, because Tracy, of all the people to pick, was gay. She left her husband for another woman.”

  “How would you know?”

  “The papers. You know, they use code, like saying ‘her partner.’”

  “They didn’t say that! They never said anything like that! I read every single word because—because—” She was working herself back up again, and he knew why she’d read the accounts. Because she was sure he was having a thing with Tracy. And probably with Queen Elizabeth, too.

  “You knew her. You’re making this up to cover up what you were doing.”

  He felt chilled, as if the air had dropped forty degrees. He calmed himself. “You’re right,” he said. “I didn’t read it in the papers. I know it because she told me it herself. That’s what she was doing in my office. She told me because she was afraid of what her boss would say.”

  Jeannie opened her mouth, then closed it with the slow-registering expression of a drunk. Then she shook her head, her wild black hair flopping back into more messiness. “You didn’t come home twice last week!” she shouted.

  Back to square one. He sighed. “I told you, I—”

  “It’s that girl in your office, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, my God, Jeannie, for Christ’s sake, you just finished saying Tracy—”
/>   “The one with the hair and the clothes from the fifties. The one who thinks she’s Marilyn Monroe.”

  “It isn’t anybody. Not in my office or any other place.”

  “Then where were you? Explain. Explain where you were and why you’re late now, too. I called your office and you weren’t there. Where were you?”

  “Taking care of business,” he said wearily. Jeannie could make him more exhausted than anybody or anything on earth. She changed the weather, made the air he breathed heavy, asphyxiating. He felt the tightness in his chest, and coughed.

  “Why aren’t you wearing the clothes you left in this morning!” She looked like that Greek myth, that lady with snakes for hair he remembered from school. She looked like she could kill.

  “I worked out. Then I changed.”

  “Sure, you worked out at her place. You keep a wardrobe there? Her Marilyn Monroe stuff and your clothing, too! What do you call what you were doing?” she demanded.

  He coughed again. “Business,” he said when he caught his breath. It was always easier to tell the truth.

  Twenty-Three

  “Holy mother of Christ!” Michael shouted. “What the—I could have killed you!”

  Billie got out of the car even while he continued to shout, working through his terror in his own fashion.

  Veronica’s face was tear-streaked and she visibly shook. Her hands, which she held up, were dark. “Blood!” she screamed.

  Billie reached toward her. “We’re here.” She turned. Michael was out of the car, pale and stunned. “This is Michael Specht, the lawyer.” She felt beyond a fool, making introductions while Veronica trembled and sobbed about blood, but she didn’t want to further terrify her with an unknown man. “What is it?” she said, scanning Veronica up and down. “Where are you hurt?” Aside from the bloodied palms and fingers, there was no sign of injury.

  “Me—it isn’t—” Veronica shook her head from side to side, swallowed.

  “Shhhh,” Billie said. “It’s going to be all right.”

  “No!”

  “Veronica,” Michael said in a theatrically calm voice. “What happened?”

  She looked at him gratefully, as if only that question could have released what roiled inside her. “I got home—I just got home—” She shook her head again. That hadn’t worked, either. “I can’t—You look. Look yourself.” She motioned them to follow her, her posture almost tilting back and away even as she moved forward, her head shaking “no” all the while, uninventing whatever was ahead.

  They reached the fence where Billie had stood with Jesse as he warily regarded the funny-looking animals. This time, there was a moon and she could see more clearly. This time, there were no llamas regarding her back, although she saw a cluster in the far distance.

  “Look!” Veronica’s voice was strangled. She pointed down. Now Billie saw llamas. Close by. Three of them, their heads nearly severed from their shaggy bodies.

  “My boys,” Veronica whispered. “My babies. They never hurt a soul. They just…my boys…”

  They lay sprawled and broken, their thick coats matted with dark bloodied patches.

  “Who could? Why…” Veronica cried.

  Billie’s stomach, her entire insides, reversed and tried to undo, unsee, get rid of what was in front of her. She heard Michael Specht gag, and at the sound, had to run across the road, to find privacy to empty what little she’d had on her stomach. When she finally stopped heaving and had taken enough deep breaths to feel stable again, she crossed back again. Veronica still sobbed, and Michael stood back from the fence, where he could no longer see the corpses.

  “You okay?” he asked softly as she approached.

  She nodded, as long as he meant only that she was through throwing up.

  “They were shot first,” he said. “Then when they were dead or dying…it’s awful. Their throats.” He gestured, quietly, toward the Whynot Farm gate. A dripping red “X” was on one white side post in what Billie fervently hoped was paint. She wasn’t sure why writing with their blood would make the murder worse, but it would.

  “What do you think it means?” he asked quietly.

  She didn’t know. She thought of CoXistence, but couldn’t imagine who could so hate the animal protectors and the animals themselves.

  “I think it’s ‘X’ as in ‘marks the spot,’” Michael said. “Just in case the message wasn’t clear that this handiwork belongs to him. Whoever X is.”

  They both looked back at Veronica, waited while she worked toward control, her back to them, and then Billie watched as Michael, in the gentlest, most caring and calming tone, spoke to her—about nothing, really, about everything, as he walked her toward her house. Billie’s eyes welled again, though not from the same source, and not that she could explain it. Still, she paused and listened for a moment before following them into the house.

  She heard them gasp and exclaim before she herself entered the pulled apart, upended room. Veronica pointed, waved, said nothing, then crumpled onto her pillowless sofa.

  “Here,” Michael said, putting pillows back on the frame and resettling her. “Here.”

  Billie envied his ability to do something, no matter what it was. While Veronica hiccuped, Billie visually checked the kitchen area. The small counter and the wooden table at which she’d sat were littered with containers—cereal boxes, rice bags, popcorn jars—all, as far as she could see, with their contents spilled about, as if a hand had gone into each and every potential hiding place.

  Looking for what?

  All the drawers had been opened and were still pulled out to varying degrees. The cabinet doors stood open and empty plastic storage containers lay on the floor.

  “Would I be disturbing the scene if I made tea?” she asked. It seemed a positive step forward, a first-aid emergency action.

  Michael still hovered over Veronica. “Or something stronger?” he asked.

  Veronica closed her eyes, took several deep breaths, her hands curled into fists. Then she shook her head and said, “Tea.”

  “I’ll use the pot holder on the teapot and only touch the three mugs,” Billie said.

  Apparently, nobody had been interested in the cabinet holding Veronica’s small dinnerware collection; the four mugs and four plates were intact. She noted that the place had been searched, not vandalized.

  She put water on to boil and excused herself. She knew about not using the bathroom in case there were fingerprints on the seat or elsewhere, but she risked assuming the llama killers had not stopped to brush their teeth, although they had opened the medicine cabinet. She squeezed toothpaste onto her finger and swabbed her mouth. Then she checked the bedroom, in which the dresser drawers and closet door were open, contents pulled half out, and the bedding pulled off, the mattress pushed so that it sat at a tilt on the floor.

  By the time she was back in the kitchen, the water had boiled, and Michael Specht was pouring it into the mugs.

  They almost could have passed for normal people in an exceptionally messy home. “Can you talk about it yet?” Billie asked when they were all settled.

  Veronica had gone from near hysteria to preternatural calm. Her skin blotched from emotion, she sat and stared directly ahead. Finally, she took a long, ragged-edged inhalation. “I came home and went right to check my…my…” She exhaled with a loud whoosh, shook her head and continued. “I didn’t even come in. Didn’t take my bag out of the car. It was dark, so at first, I didn’t see. I was looking in the distance, looking for the bachelor boys. I nearly…I just about fell over…” She shook her head. “And then I’m not sure. I don’t know what next.”

  “I think next you ran into the street, ready to flag down whoever came by, and that was us,” Michael said. “Do you have any idea who could have done this?” Michael’s voice was both consoling and in control. Billie wondered whether it was a voice he used often.

  “Who would do anything like that except an insane person?” Her eyes were wild and the head-shaking re
sumed. “I can’t stand it, I honestly cannot. It feels worse than…worse than anything.”

  They sat in silence punctuated only by the infrequent sound of a car passing in the night. “Shall I call the police now?” Michael asked.

  “It’s only animals, they’ll say. They think I’m crazy. Only animals. I don’t even think you can murder animals. You can kill them, but that isn’t the same thing legally, is it?”

  Michael cleared his throat. “There’s a…did you notice the mark on the gate post?”

  She looked confused. “I drove right in, I didn’t…” And then she pushed back, deeper into her seat and half averted her face. “Why? What did—what writing? What did it say?”

  He sighed. “It’s an ‘X,’ that’s all. Unless you know something that explains it, I’d say it’s meaningless, except that I think you have to leave again for a while, be someplace that feels safer.”

  “It’s him again. It’s Robby. He’s still calling and threatening.”

  “Threatening? I thought the calls were silent,” Billie said.

  She shook her head. “Now he talks, but I can’t understand what he says. I didn’t know he could be this insane. I mean with Tracy, at least, there was love once, there was…but my…”

  “The phone calls,” Billie said.

  “They started again.”

  “But they’re different, aren’t they?” Billie asked. “You said he’s talking now. Maybe it’s not Rob—”

  “He talked before, too. But only to Tracy. I only overheard—walked in and heard her saying she wouldn’t, and she couldn’t, and he should leave her alone.” Veronica held onto her teacup and saucer with both hands, as if it were supporting her. “He killed her,” she said bitterly, “so there’s nobody left to talk to except me. And now”—She waved, weakly, toward the front of the house—“anybody who did that would have killed me, too.”

  It was hard to disagree. In fact, the llamas seemed a pitiable substitute—creatures at the wrong place at the wrong time when it turned out that whatever they were looking for, and Veronica herself, were missing.