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

by Gillian Roberts

  “I thought of that.” Billie looked like a chastised dog. It was an expression that particularly irked Emma, even when dogs did it. “But,” she said, brightening somewhat, “I have these other interviews ahead, so maybe, somebody along the way will know about these notes, or a journal…” Her voice trailed upward, hesitantly, somebody contemplating a mountain she didn’t want to scale.

  Emma shrugged. “Do what you like. Just be careful about it. You don’t even know what it is or whether it’s relevant. But if there is whatever it is—which there probably isn’t, and if it has any relevance to this case, which it almost definitely won’t, but if it has and hasn’t been destroyed already, which is highly, highly unlikely—then whoever has it and hasn’t turned it over wants it for some important reason. And does not want you to have it. Which is simply to say they aren’t going to be keen on your asking for it.”

  Billie had blinked rapidly during the riff, but now her features shifted to what Emma thought of as absolute zero. Annoying that Billie could do this. Vastly annoying to consider the idea that all her expressions were practiced and purposeful, including that you’ve-taken-the-joy-from-my-life hangdog one. That, in fact, she played Emma the way she would any audience, manipulated her for all she was worth.

  The absolute zero face said Billie knew everything Emma was saying, had thought of it herself and did not need to hear it. Well, she was wrong, dammit. She was a trainee, and Emma had obligations to fulfill.

  “Look,” Emma said, “as long as Zandra Riddock is holding an open wallet up for Michael Specht, and as long as he approves of your whereabouts and fees, do whatever.” She cleared her throat. She did not want to do this, but still…“One more thing”—there were things Emma knew and Billie did not—“Michael Specht is an attractive man with an interesting reputation. Likes women, but generally for short spells only. Told me once he loves complicated cases. Everything else, he likes to be as simple as possible. And I don’t think he loves anything simple or straightforward. Anyway, in case he…if you…if he—If that in any way over-involves you in this case, then I’d advise against—”

  “Not to worry,” Billie said blandly. “No problem there.”

  So something was happening or had already happened between them. Not that Billie would say what, not even after Emma had extended herself, tried to help Billie avoid trouble.

  Well, Emma wasn’t going to ask, dammit. She had better things to do than wonder what it was. She wasn’t going to beg for the salacious details.

  “’Bye,” Billie said, halfway to the door.

  “Did you ask the llama lady about the notes?” Emma said.

  “What?”

  “The llama lady—the one she lived with! Didn’t you ask her about the diary, the notes, the whatever?”

  “I didn’t know about them until—”

  “Well, for God’s sake, woman, why not? Isn’t it obvious she’d be your first go? Call her!” She waved her out, glaring at her back as she made her exit.

  She did not care about Billie’s personal life. It was none of her business, as George would have said. Her business was her business, so she had no choice but to look at the files on her desk, including the one she’d marked “closed.” The one she now guiltily opened.

  George had been right. She’d searched, done her best, and had come up with very little. Not the results she’d have liked, but results all the same.

  Time to give it up. Emma plain and simply could not find Heather’s birth mother.

  An image flashed across Emma’s brain. Timid, whispering, buttoned-up Kay, in a private, very unbuttoned, and wild victory dance. Kay triumphantly clutching her secrets.

  Damn that woman! Damn everybody’s secrets!

  And damn if Emma was going down for the count without so much as a squawk, letting Kay Wilson think her lies had gone unrecognized.

  She glanced at her watch. Not yet noon, plenty of time. The woman worked at Macy’s, unless that was another lie.

  But in the course of that first interview, she’d said that Heather had worked there briefly as well, and it was her dropping out of that job and then college that had started some of the mother-daughter fighting.

  Where was that intake form? She retrieved the file and flipped through the pages until she found it. Macy’s, she’d written, although not which one. There were three in Marin alone. Why the hell was Macy’s chopped up that way with the clothing in Corte Madaras, the housewares in Terra Linda and the furniture store in Novato? So which one? She had a dim memory of Kay Wilson clucking disapproval because Heather had barely “sold a single wire whisk” before she quit, but she wasn’t positive she’d actually heard those words, and even if so, she wasn’t sure it might not have been some peculiar retailing expression.

  Emma called information, then punched in a series of numbers until she reached Macy’s personnel. She introduced herself, explained her line of work. “I’m investigating a motor accident case,” she told the woman on the other end. “One of your employees was a witness to it. A good Samaritan—she stayed to help the police, but unfortunately, she just wrote down ‘Macy’s’ as her employer, and I’m not sure which of the Marin stores she’d be at.”

  Please let it be Marin, she silently thought. Because if she had to drive elsewhere, she’d have to acknowledge what a fool’s errand this entire confrontation was. “I need to confirm an item with her.” Like why she is such a total liar.

  “Kay Wilson?” the woman on the other end repeated, after Emma had given the name. “Let me take a look.” Then, after a pause, “You sure of that name?”

  No, she thought. Not again. Then she remembered the birth certificate. “Wait—no. It’s Megan Wilson. Megan Kay Wilson. I’m sorry for the confusion.”

  “We don’t have any employee with that name,” the voice said, still pleasantly.

  Had Emma actually believed it could be otherwise? But Emma wasn’t ready to give up and let that woman do that victory dance yet. “She said something about selling whisks. Does that help? Kitchenware? It would be such a shame for the victim in this accident if we can’t find Ms. Wilson.”

  “Housewares, you mean, then. Whisks,” the woman said. “Let me double-check.” The silence went on too long, and finally, the woman said, “Could you possibly mean Caitlin Wilson? If you give me a minute, I can pull up her record on the screen and see if there’s a…yes, there it is. Kay could be a nickname for that, don’t you think?”

  Emma’s pulse pounded in her neck, her esophagus, her fingertips. No one had ever uttered the name Caitlin. It wasn’t on the birth certificate, either. “Thank you, that’s probably her.”

  “Want me to connect you?”

  “Yes—wait, no. If you’ll just tell me what department she’s—”

  “You were absolutely correct. Housewares. The Terra Linda store.”

  “Thanks, I’ll be in touch later.” Emma sat and fumed before turning back to the computer’s bookmarks and hitting the one for the social security death index. Apparently even Megan Kay Wilson did not exist. Emma had been working with ghosts. Had the woman who called herself Kay—or Caitlin—checked the obituaries and picked up the name of a dead woman her own age? It happened.

  Or worse, she may have killed someone and taken her child and name.

  She typed in Caitlin Wilson. No listing. Did that mean she actually was Caitlin? Then who was Kay? Or Megan, for that matter? She typed in that name: Megan Kay Wilson.

  That woman had been dead for nearly two decades. November, 1980. Three months after Nowell Wilson’s death, and also in Butte County. Nineteen years old.

  Emma closed the screen. But then she had one last thought, and she returned to the site, finding several Heather Wilsons, but none whose identity this Heather could have taken as they’d died much too recently.

  Heather was actually alive. Or at least not listed as dead. Emma was no longer sure that was the same thing.

  *

  The housewares section was busy and Emma watch
ed women run their fingers adoringly over small appliances and glossy cookware, but Emma was interested in only one item, the mysterious Mrs.-Miss Megan Kay Caitlin Wilson.

  And finally, she found her, explaining the pros and cons of two brands of ice-cream machines to a woman who cocked her head alertly, as if each word was of enormous import.

  Emma waited until the sale was completed, which felt near to forever. Finally, Kay—or Megan, or Caitlin or whatever other person she’d turn out to be—turned with a happy-homemaker smile. When she saw Emma, her expression froze as if she’d put it in one of the machines she’d just sold.

  “Ms. Wilson?” Emma said. “I’m sure you remember me. I know you’re not my client and I assure you this is as unusual for me as it must be for you but for once I feel I really have to do this before I talk to Heather.”

  “What…what do you…?”

  “We have to talk.”

  “I’m working now.”

  “Break time.”

  “I’ve already told you whatever—”

  “I mean the truth, this time.”

  “I’m not your client!” she snapped. “I don’t have to—”

  “I think you will, though, Kay,” Emma said.

  Kay Wilson held her head higher. “Leave me alone,” she said. “I’m working.”

  “It must be really difficult to work,” Emma said.

  Kay’s eyebrows pulled closer together. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said in a low voice.

  “Don’t you feel…dead tired? Dead on your feet? Or just plain dead?”

  Kay’s eyes darted left to right. A woman inspecting a juicer stopped to listen.

  “People have been searching for the secret of eternal life forever,” Emma said. “And here you are with an interesting spin on it. Who’d imagine that the afterlife consisted of selling kitchen appliances? Think of what this information’s going to do to the world’s religions.”

  “Please,” Kay said.

  Emma smiled. “How come you aren’t asking me what I’m talking about?”

  “Please. I’m working.”

  “Even the working dead are legally entitled to coffee breaks,” Emma said. “I’ll wait right here.”

  Thirty-Two

  Billie drove reluctantly, as if her mind, not her hands, were on the wheel, and the conflicts raging in there caused the car to barely move.

  It wasn’t fair. She’d actually heard herself say those annoying and infantile words. As if anything in life were truly “fair.”

  As if Emma Howe was ever fair.

  How could Emma assume those notes of Tracy’s—notes Billie didn’t know existed until the day before—would be something she’d have already asked Veronica about? Did she expect Billie to have said something like, “And do you have anywhere on the premises something that will later prove of possible importance? I don’t know what it is I’m searching for but it might be significant in a way that I can’t yet know, so do you have it?”

  She and Michael had asked Veronica whether anything seemed missing from the tossed home, but Veronica hadn’t been able to tell if anything was gone. Nor had she been able to think of anything anybody could want.

  Now, in hindsight, it must have been the emerald ring that the llama-killer had been searching for. It was the only thing of value, although proof of what? The affair? Who wanted to keep that secret enough to kill?

  But to act as if anybody knew anything then, to shout, out of the blue, “Call her, then!” To act as if Billie were an idiot for not having done so already…

  And it was so odd, because before then Emma had been almost benign. Even almost cute, warning Billie about Michael Specht’s womanizing or whatever.

  And then—blammo! Back to Der Führer.

  No one with a shred of humanity or sanity would have made that order. In the first place, it lacked logic. If Veronica hadn’t mentioned notes, it meant either that they weren’t in her house, or known to her to be there or there were notes she knew about, but she’d chosen not to mention them.

  The most likely scenario was that there were no notes anywhere. That Ana the housekeeper, in trying to establish the fact that she set the rules, reacted to a casual sentence on Tracy’s part. Perhaps something she thought she might begin. An idea, not an actual set of notes.

  Using common sense, what was to be gained through a phone call?

  Nonetheless, here she was, because aside from lacking logic, the idea lacked humanity, something Emma was incapable of understanding.

  The last time Billie had seen Veronica, the woman had been distraught and in despair, her animals slaughtered, her lover dead, her house upended.

  Billie didn’t like the hit-and-run involvement with people that seemed a component of the job. Get information, leave people at their lowest moment and if they weren’t of further use, never see them again. Phone in future questions.

  Nonetheless, she had tried. She’d called Veronica and asked how she was doing, but the dead voice on the other end didn’t actually have to respond. She was barely being.

  There were things you did because you were a human being, things like visiting the sick, and it seemed time for a sick call. Billie lied, said she was going to be in the area, and would it be all right if she popped in for a few minutes to say hello. And Billie told the truth, said that she was concerned.

  As soon as she saw Veronica, she knew somebody had better be concerned. She looked like photos taken during the Depression, like a woman weathered until there was no hope or joy left in her. The first time she’d met her, she’d been impressed by her unadorned beauty, but it was growing sharp-edged and she was aging in fast-forward. “You look exhausted,” she said. It was an understatement. Veronica looked like the haggard older sister of the person Billie had first visited.

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “Have you seen a—”

  “Doctor? Shrink? Yes, and I have medications. They don’t work. Not enough.” She stood still, looking awkward, as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. “Look here,” she said. “I’m planting seedlings. The vegetable garden. Mind if I keep working? So much to get done. It helps, though. Gives me a place for my hands.”

  They walked around to the back of the house where a large square of ground was surrounded by high chickenwire. “Deer,” Veronica said. She stood, hands on hips, regarding her vegetable plot with its neat raised rows of freshly tilled earth. But her stare went on too long, and Billie understood that she wasn’t seeing anything.

  “I brought you something,” Billie said, handing Veronica Tracy’s cardigan. “She left it at Gavin’s and I thought you might like having it.”

  Veronica smiled and held it close. “Thanks,” she whispered, and she put it on although the weather was mild, smoothing and holding it as if it were an embrace. “I can’t stop wondering what’s next,” she said after a while. “And why, too. Mostly, why.”

  “Have there been more phone calls?” Billie asked gently. Veronica’s sigh was ragged-edged. She shook her head. “He made his point.” She pulled at a frayed thread on her jeans. “Or maybe he realized she’s dead for keeps and there is no point. Or backed off because he realized that somebody’s going to think this through and know that he killed Tracy.” The thread wouldn’t loosen, and she picked at it, her expression concentrated and almost angry. And then she abruptly let go, as if she’d noticed how intent she’d been, and she shoved her hands into the deep pockets of the cardigan to keep them still, or at least out of sight. She looked at Billie, her expression bleak. “Or maybe he’s going to kill me, too. I’ve given up on hiding at friends’ or relatives’.” She shrugged. What would be, would be, including her own murder.

  “Time to get back to work.” She pulled her hands out of the pockets. One held a crumple of paper. A tissue. A pack of matches. “Stuff,” she said. “Trash.” She unfolded a scrap of paper. “Tracy’s trash. She made eights weirdly. Two separate circles. I used to make fun of how she wouldn’t join them. Look.
” She handed Billie the scrap of paper and shoved the tissue back into the pocket.

  “How can I be nostalgic about trash?” she said before lifting a flat with tiny green leaves poking through dark soil.

  Billie looked at the scrap. An 800 number and the eight was, indeed, oddly made of two floating circles.

  Veronica had walked a few paces and now knelt, carefully making small holes in the earth and putting an infant vegetable in each.

  Billie waited until an entire row was planted. “I hate to bother you with more questions but I have to,” she said. “Did you go through everything Tracy had here? I mean, so you’d know whatever that was?”

  Veronica looked baffled. “I guess. Plus the police were here. They looked through her stuff, too. Took a few things, not all that much. I assume they did that everywhere, not that any of it matters.”

  “Why everywhere? Where else? I mean I knew she left things at Gavin’s—”

  “She left things all over the place. It was how she was. As if the world was her closet.” Veronica sat back on her haunches, and pushed the visor up a bit, so that more of her face was visible. “We called her the ‘Unpack Rat.’ She’d leave things where she thought they’d come in handy instead of carrying them back and forth.”

  “I’d never know where anything was that way.”

  “But she did. She left things like this sweater, or running shoes or an umbrella. You know. Things the rest of us wish were with us, but never are when you need them.”

  “How about valuables? Did she leave them around, too?”

  “She didn’t have any. But I don’t think she would have. Money was a problem. Money kept her from leaving Robby for a long time.” She shook her head slowly. “Didn’t own any jewelry, except for her wedding ring, and that was a plain gold band. Come to think of it, she left that with Robby, so I guess there was a valuable left somewhere else. Otherwise, no. Why?”