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

by Gillian Roberts

  She’d seen that tramp with the hair preening at the window, sticking her boobs out. Guess his bimbos didn’t have to work, as long as they stuck out their boobs. Because then he was there—holding her in public, in the window, for God’s sake. They didn’t care who knew, in broad daylight, her hand on him, his hand under her chin. Saying things to each other. Saying things that had nothing to do with business and everything to do with running a knife through her heart.

  She had to calm down, but how could she? The arrogance of it! The contempt for her and her feelings and her children and the life they’d made.

  The blood in her veins wasn’t moving right. It jumped, it didn’t flow.

  The life she’d thought they’d made.

  She’d had suspicions, but it wasn’t the same. What she’d said to Adrienne, it hadn’t been real, like this. That wasn’t the same as seeing them, a nightmare acted out in front of her open eyes. The jumping blood filled the top of her head, the pressure building so that it might blow off.

  She felt naked, skinned, exposed.

  She reminded herself that she didn’t have to feel this way. She could be in charge. She didn’t have to be his victim.

  He gave it to her for her protection. That’s what he said. She patted her bag.

  She couldn’t hear her thoughts for the roaring in her head, the shouting, the screams. She was all noise—there was nothing left of her. He’d made her nothing, less than the dirt on the sidewalk.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  The fact of him was killing her. She had to protect herself.

  *

  Emma had finished her coffee and the refill so long ago she was sure someone was going to ask her to leave, but this was a polite café and a slow hour, so she sat and allowed the aspirin and caffeine to kick in while she sandblasted the cornerstone of her life.

  It amazed her that a decision made years ago by a teenager had caused an earthquake in Emma’s personal landscape, heaving moss-grown fixtures every which way.

  Heather had said she’d take her coffee break when Emma came around, and it was long since time to get this over with—although at this point, she’d skip the coffee part. But she’d start the weekend with a clear mind. She stood and paid her bill.

  “You okay?” the cashier asked.

  Emma touched her cheek, her hair. “Why?” she asked, “Is there something…odd about me?”

  The cashier’s cheeks colored. She looked about twelve, but then most of the population looked that way to Emma these days. “Sorry,” the girl said. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I noticed you sitting there for some time, and then, right now, you looked worried and you were doing this thing—like now—like what you’re doing.”

  Emma realized she was pulling in and biting down on her bottom lip, a nervous habit she thought she’d outgrown in junior high. She released the lip and tried to smile.

  “Lots to think about, right?” the cashier murmured tactfully.

  Emma felt her eyes stay with her, drill into her back as she walked away from the café, and when she turned, she saw that it wasn’t her imagination. The cashier had been watching her, still wondering what was going on with Emma.

  As Emma herself wondered.

  *

  Marlena honestly didn’t hear the woman enter, she was working so hard. She hated this part of the job, these endless insurance forms with their lists of everything anybody owned, and how chipped or warped or frayed it was. She wasn’t a particularly good typist and her neck felt as if she was going to need traction by the time she was done.

  “Excuse me.” Then a throat clearing.

  And there she was. There was something about her that belonged in another time. Old-fashioned. Marlena could picture her in a black-and-white movie. A British black-and-white movie, the kind that bored her.

  “Remember me? We spoke a little over a week ago.”

  Marlena nodded. “Sure. Um—”

  “Emma Howe. I was here about Gavin Riddock and the Tracy Lester homicide.”

  “Oh, sure. I remember. So, ah…” Marlena checked David Vincent’s door, as she remembered how upset he’d been by the idea of somebody butting in during the workday, using up his time with her questions. It was half open. “Is this more about that case? Because my boss—”

  “No,” Emma Howe said quickly. “No questions. This has nothing to do with that.”

  Fat chance. The woman was lying, because why else would she be here? And why had Marlena thought that a private investigator would be up-front with what she was doing? “See, the thing is,” Marlena said, “Mr. Vincent is here this time, and he was really mad about having the day disrupted that way.” She waited, but the old woman wasn’t getting it. Maybe she was hard of hearing. “He doesn’t want more visits like that,” she said more loudly.

  Emma Howe backed up a step, and frowned. “I’m here to see Heather Wilson.”

  “Heather?”

  “She’s expecting me. Would you buzz her or tell her I’m here?”

  “Heather Wilson.” The woman was definitely not telling the truth. She hadn’t interviewed Heather last time. Besides, Heather Wilson hadn’t known Tracy Lester or Gavin Riddock. Heather Wilson barely knew anyone. “Mrs. Howe,” Marlena said, “I’m trying to tell you—this investigation stuff—this place is off-limits. Mr. Vincent doesn’t want it going on during business hours.”

  “If you tell me where she is, I’ll find her myself.”

  “One sec,” Marlena said. “Let me do this one thing.” She needed time to think. She found the right lines and typed in “spindle nicked,” “front left leg paint chipped.”

  “This is not an investigation and it is not on your employer’s time and I would appreciate it if you would find her for me. This is simply a matter of genealogical research.”

  Heather’s ancestors? Of all the closed-mouthed bitches, that drab little Heather Wilson! There was only one reason people searched through the family tree that way: to find an inheritance. And not a peep out of her. Or maybe this woman found her because somebody else hired her to find an heir. Maybe this woman spotted her last week, while she was interviewing Marlena and dull Heather Wilson was eavesdropping.

  Marlena had read about things like this, had dreamed about them, too. She scrunched her forehead. “Like, about a will? You one of those people who find missing heirs and stuff?”

  Emma Howe’s smile was tight. She thought she was hiding something, but she wasn’t fooling Marlena. “Could be,” she murmured. “Could you please buzz her? I don’t mean to rush you, but I don’t want to get stuck in Friday afternoon northbound traffic.”

  “Hold on a minute. I’ll find out where she is.” If Heather Wilson was inheriting money, she could wait a few minutes longer, the bitch. She wouldn’t need this job then, but Marlena still would, and Marlena’s only “inheritance” possibilities were behind that office door, which was half open anyway, so he’d probably already heard. She wasn’t going to risk pissing him off by not telling him who was here.

  At her boss’s door, she turned and smiled at Emma Howe, who scowled back, as if she didn’t approve. Marlena knocked smartly.

  *

  Billie paid the parking-lot attendant and walked toward the address Zack had given her. As eager as she was to tell Emma—to gloat, in truth—she’d wait nearby, or outside, until Emma was finished with the Wilson girl. She wasn’t going to risk spoiling her moment by angering Emma. Again.

  The address was across the street, she realized, and she looked for the nearest crosswalk, but as she scanned the opposite side, she caught the words “Moving On” and stopped. The place Tracy mentioned.

  She checked the address again, and looked across at the big letters under the awning. Emma was already there. She’d found out before Billie had.

  Billie’s great, amazing discovery popped into nothingness, like a soap bubble.

  And then she remembered that wasn’t necessarily so. The girl in search of her birth mother had come
to Emma because she’d seen her interviewing a co-worker about Gavin. This made Billie uneasy for a new reason, because it put Emma at a disadvantage. Ignorance was never bliss and less often safe. Dangerous to have no idea you’re in the dark heart of what your agency is investigating. She reminded herself that Emma had been inside there before and nothing had happened, and there was no reason to think anything bad would happen today.

  With less than the comfort level she’d anticipated, she leaned against the dusty pink clapboard of a dress shop, and waited for Emma to exit. She looked upward, watched and listened to the seagulls, knew she looked relaxed, but she couldn’t make herself feel that way. Ten minutes ago, she’d rejoiced in the fact that she knew things Emma did not but now, the same idea caused anxiety instead of pleasure. Emma was suddenly an innocent, unaware of the true nature of her surroundings, of why or by whom Tracy Lester had been killed.

  She filled the waiting time by studying pedestrians, deciding who was a native and who a visitor, even aside from inappropriately light clothing for the season. And then slowly, she realized that one of them, a well-dressed woman in jeans and a suede jacket was behaving peculiarly. She pressed herself flat against the moving company’s facade, standing beside the window, then tilting toward it until only her head bobbled in front of the window glass in quick back and forth motions. And after a series of peeks so quick she couldn’t have seen anything but a blur, she’d press her pocketbook to her heart, then sidestep farther away from the window, her lips moving, as if in prayer.

  Then she repeated her ritual.

  Solo hide-and-seek? Another woman off her meds, Billie thought. But too well-dressed for the homeless.

  After the third series of bobs and silent prayers—or curses, for all Billie could tell—the herky jerky woman, now past the window, faced the building, clutched her pocketbook to her chest and opened the door of Moving On.

  Too much. This, and Emma in there unknowing. Billie couldn’t stand out here, holding onto her news until Emma made her exit. Whether or not it made her look a fool, whether or not it cost her the job, whether or not the woman in the suede jacket was a danger or merely a pest, whether or not Billie could even explain this decision, she couldn’t stand herself if she simply stood on the sidewalk, waiting.

  *

  “Come in, come in,” Mr. Vincent—David—said immediately after she knocked. Like he’d been waiting to see if Marlena would come to him. Testing her. She was glad she’d made the right decision.

  She closed the door behind her. He smiled and nodded. “You’re looking cheerier than you were,” he said. “Good for you.”

  “The detective’s here,” she whispered. “I knew you’d want to—”

  “Who? What detective? What are you talking about?”

  “Remember? You got all upset when I told you? The detective who was here last week, asking about Gavin Riddock and Tracy Lester.”

  And he got all upset again so she was really glad she’d told him. “Why?” he asked. “Didn’t you tell her? I thought I said I wouldn’t allow—”

  Before she could answer, he asked more questions, each in an angrier tone than the one before. She didn’t like that one bit. She wasn’t responsible for the old lady who’d come back, and she’d done her part by telling him, so what was this about? She backed closer to the doorway, unable to correct him, to get a word in edgewise to tell him about Heather and the inheritance.

  Well then screw Heather. Let him talk all he wanted. What was the big rush? Heather would have to wait fifteen minutes longer to get her hands on the money.

  David went on and on. “Did she ask you anything this time? What did you tell her? Where is she? Did she say why she came back? What the hell did you tell her the first time? She has no right—”

  “Listen,” she said, “I tried.” Before she could calm him down or answer a single one of his questions, he reached in front of her and flung the door open. It was like they were suddenly on stage, one next to the other.

  “There she is.” She pointed. “Her name is…” Marlena’s voice dribbled off into silence, because Emma Howe looked odd, standing stiffly beside Marlena’s desk, right where she’d been, but now her body was too straight, too still, and her expression peculiar, as if she wanted to speak but couldn’t get the words out, as if—

  As if she saw what Marlena suddenly saw, what David beside her saw because he made a strangled sound as a woman leaped into view.

  Jeannie Vincent—mad eyes, suede jacket, wrinkled linen shirt. And gun.

  Thirty-Nine

  Billie snapped her phone shut and opened the door of the moving company.

  And stopped, mid-stride.

  Emma was oddly positioned, as if on alert, practically vibrating.

  She glanced at Billie with short-lived surprise, then moved her head, directing Billie’s glance toward an inner doorway where a man and a young woman with platinum hair looked sculpted into place.

  Billie thought, irrationally, of a childhood game called “Statues.” “Freeze!” someone would call and wherever you were and whatever you were doing, you stayed in that position.

  The woman in the middle wasn’t playing. The wild woman in jeans and the suede jacket shouted and gesticulated, her gestures emphasized by the addition of a gun in one hand. She waved with it, as if she’d forgotten it was there, as if it were an extra, familiar appendage.

  Slightly behind Emma another young woman, this one with plain features and brown hair, had also resisted freezing, at least verbally. “What’s happening? What’s going on? What’s happening?” she frantically repeated, punctuating her phrases with wails and sniffles.

  “You!” the wild woman screamed at the paralyzed couple in the doorway. “You son of a bitch, I’ll kill you! I know what you’ve been up to! I know now! I know what really goes on here.”

  The man in the doorway looked stricken, cornered, his glance sweeping the room, as if he expected to find an ally or rescue committee.

  “Thought you could get away with it, didn’t you? Thought nobody would know, but I do!”

  “No,” he said in a low voice. “Nothing’s going on except the moving business, so calm down. Whatever you’ve heard—”

  This madwoman had also found out?

  “Adrienne thought you were smuggling drugs, but I knew better. I knew she was wrong.” The veins on her neck looked ready to pop.

  Emma made another jerky “look there!” gesture with her head. She wanted Billie to notice something. What? She could see very well that the woman had a gun. And Emma didn’t begin to understand what Billie knew, what was going on there, and what this woman knew.

  “Jeannie, I’m telling you to be quiet,” the man said. He spoke in the overly calm voice adopted when animals foamed at the mouth or men thought women were likely to do so. Billie knew that a voice like that—patronizing and offensive—had never once calmed a woman down. She herself bristled at the sound, remembered her ex using it near the end when they understood that theirs was not going to be a friendly divorce. It was a tone that said, “I am sane and you are not,” and was itself capable of driving people insane.

  She listened to this man drone on in the pseudo-soothing way, telling the woman that she didn’t know whatever she thought she knew.

  Next to him, the blonde in the fifties getup had both her hands up to her mouth, eyes bugging out above her scarlet nails. She looked like a cartoon character.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the man said, dropping his I-am-sane-and-you-are-not bit. “You look like hell!”

  That clinched it, he was definitely her husband.

  “Go home,” he said. “Get some sleep and you’ll see things more like they actually are. This is a place of business.”

  “Monkey business!” she screamed.

  He got that cornered look again, checking Emma and Billie and whoever the brown-haired girl was. Billie could almost see him controlling his breath. And no wonder. Monkeys as business was an unfortunately apt choice o
f idioms. Monkeys and parrots and lizards. Whatever slithered or jumped or fluttered and interested a collector.

  She suddenly thought of Veronica and her llamas. She had to tell the woman what had happened and why. If she got out of here in one piece, she’d drive out there the next day with Jesse, make sure Veronica was going to be all right with it. She’d ask Michael about the ring before she mentioned it, but she was sure the tape would prove to be a valid will. Besides, the ring was in a limbo of nonexistence. A transfer seemed easy enough and Veronica could replace the lost llamas, for starters.

  “We work here,” the man was saying in that irritating voice. “Us, drivers, accountants, clients. That’s all we do, and whatever terrible thing you imagine is in your mind, Jeannie.”

  “Don’t Jeannie me! I have eyes. I have ears. I know about your women! I’m the one got the phone calls—”

  “What?” He looked as if only now she had become unhinged. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your women, David Vincent! Your lies and whoring, your—”

  This was the smuggler himself? The murderer? He was so ordinary looking.

  “I saw you!” Jeannie Vincent screamed. “I know what’s going on! You”—she raised the gun and pointed it at the blonde—“you tramp!”

  “Put down the gun,” the man said. “You’re making an enormous mistake. And you’re driving away whatever business I have.” His tone turned cajoling, as if to a child. “Look, Jeannie, look over there.” His chin pointed toward Billie. “If you frighten customers away, where will we be?”

  At the word “customer” Jeannie turned and looked where David Vincent pointed, at Billie. The gun, held absentmindedly in her hand swung with her. She stared at Billie as if she were a new life-form.

  Billie smiled weakly and waved her hand in casual greeting. This was too ridiculous for words.

  Jeannie Vincent’s gun hand waved her away. “Out!” she said.

  “Mrs. Vincent, please,” the blond girl in the doorway said.

  Jeannie Vincent pivoted back so she faced the girl. “That’s right! I’m Mrs. Vincent! I’m his wife, so remember that and don’t you dare speak to me you two-bit small-town Marilyn Monroe! Don’t you—”