Fiction Can Be Murder

by Becky Clark

  Stop that. No use worrying about it. What’s done is done. I hadn’t murdered Melinda. But somebody did. And it was probably someone I knew. And they probably knew where I lived.

  A car honked. I gasped and jerked the Kia back into my own lane. My long-cold travel mug of coffee caromed around the cupholder.

  Keeping my eyes on the road, I rooted around my bag until I felt my phone. I pulled it out and looked at it. No calls. What good did it do to have a cop for a brother if you couldn’t find him when you needed him? I slipped it into my console with the pens and paperclips that seemed to find their way there no matter how often I cleaned it out.

  I glanced at the phone every four seconds while I drove, willing it to light up.

  If this real killer used one of my fictional scenarios, then what about all my other stories? Book number one was an arson cover-up. Book number two was a bomb in a package. Book number three was a maniac stalker in the lilac bushes.

  I stopped at a red light and glanced nervously to my right. The guy in the Escalade looked like a murderer. Maybe the head of a drug cartel. I locked my doors. And that lady in front of me with her cigarette out the window. Why couldn’t she smoke inside her car? Did she just kill her lover and needed to calm down but didn’t want her husband to get suspicious?

  Across the street a woman pushed a double stroller. Really? Two babies? Not hiding an Uzi in there?

  The light changed and I gave the Kia a bit too much gas, almost ramming the suspicious smoker. I slammed on my brakes, glancing in the rearview mirror at the same time. The guy behind me threw a middle finger salute and I raised my hand in contrition. Or at least I meant it to be contrition. What if he thought it was defiant and he pulled his handgun from his glove box, roared up next to me, shot me dead, then escaped to New Mexico? Another unsolved crime.

  I saw a Facebook meme the other day that said the average person walked past a murderer thirty-six times in their life. I knew what it meant, but because of the poor sentence structure I made a joke that I’d just go the other direction on the thirty-seventh time. Now it didn’t seem so funny. I’d seen at least thirty-six people today. Statistically, did that mean one of them was a murderer? Did Facebook know what it was talking about?

  I shuddered. I turned my heater up a notch, but I didn’t think it would help my chill.

  Okay, let’s set aside for a minute all the real murders seemingly going on around us all day, every day. Clearly, Melinda’s murderer was either paying homage to my imaginative prose, had no imagination of their own, or was trying to frame me.

  None of that seemed more comforting than real murderers all over the place, whether they were toddlers or terrorists.

  But if it had something to do with my writing, my books, my imagination, then maybe I could figure it out and keep myself or one of my friends from being their next victim. But what if it didn’t have anything to do with my books? What if this murderer was just too lazy to think up their own method? What about all those other genre tropes, all those rules and clichés we mystery lovers loved?

  I was suddenly too hot and turned off the heater.

  What about all those murders in movies and TV? Arsenic in elderberry wine. Dissolving bodies in chemicals. Firing squad. Axes. Well-placed kicks to the head. Gruesome stabbings. Feeding people to pigs. Burying them alive.

  Geez, just avoiding the scenarios Adrian Monk dealt with would be a full-time job. And then there was Rockford, and Columbo, and Sherlock, and Castle, and Longmire, and those crazies on Criminal Minds. How could I be alert for all of them?

  I pulled into the driveway at my apartment complex, where the security gate was wide open. I despaired that they considered this a secure complex. I flushed with shame at how many times I’d been happy when it had been left open for days at a time, probably broken. It was so much more convenient that way, instead of having to fumble with a key card. Plus, there was a pedestrian gate right next to it that didn’t even lock; the only people that gate kept out would be those murdering toddlers who couldn’t reach the latch. The other two pedestrian gates, on the north and south sides of the perimeter of the complex, weren’t much better. I paid extra for security, so it shouldn’t be a joke. I should feel safe. And I didn’t anymore.

  I parked in my space but stayed locked in the car while I scanned the area. I debated whether to move my car from my covered carport space to the empty guest space closer to my apartment. Snow was in the forecast, so I stayed put.

  I took a deep breath, mustered my courage, and bolted from the car. Ten paces away I realized that in my rush, I’d left both my phone and my messenger bag in the Kia. I raced back and fumbled for my keys, eyes nervously darting around. I dropped my phone into the pocket of my bag, tucked it under my arm like a football, and re-locked my car. With my keys in my hand, I made my way up the sidewalk. As I neared my front door and began to breathe easier, a rabbit streaked out from under a juniper hedge and scared the bejesus out of me. I ran up to the door and shoved my key in the lock. I slammed the door behind me and leaned against it, fighting for control of my lungs.

  The stillness of my apartment calmed me after a few moments. Everything was as I’d left it that morning. Dirty dishes still in the sink from last night’s lasagne feast with Ozzi. Scarf I’d decided not to wear tossed over the back of the living room chair. Light on in the bathroom down the hall. Wait. Did I leave the light on? I squinched my eyes, trying to remember.

  Ozzi had tried to persuade me to shower with him before he left, but I knew from experience that it wouldn’t have made either of us very clean. Quite the opposite. Plus, it was the middle of the night. He’d given up and used the hallway bathroom so I could get back to sleep. He must have left the light on. Probably. Why couldn’t I remember? When did he leave? Was it before or after midnight? And why didn’t he stay like he normally did?

  I glanced again down the hallway. But the more pressing question right now was, why was my bathroom light on? Was someone here? Would a murderer need a light to kill me?

  As I tried to decide whether to grab a knife from the kitchen and investigate or race out of my apartment, across several state lines, away from all of this trauma and danger to hole up in some off-the-grid cabin in a remote wilderness, my phone rang full blast with my brother’s ringtone. For the second time in three minutes, I had no more bejesus. I scrambled for the phone and saw Lance’s photo on the screen. My brother was two years younger than me but looked ten years older. It startled me to see how much he looked like Dad. Probably always would.

  “Lance. Hey.” I took a deep, calming breath and sidled along the hall toward the bathroom. My brother on the phone gave me courage. At least if I got murdered someone would know about it right away.

  “You know anyone named Joaquin?” Lance often seemed to start a conversation halfway in when he called. Sometimes he made me wonder if I’d blacked out for three sentences of small talk and didn’t remember we’d been chatting.

  “I don’t think so.” I poked my head in the bathroom. Empty. “The reason I called earlier—”

  “I know why you called.” I heard the exasperation in his voice.

  “You heard about Melinda?” Without waiting for an answer, I asked, “Didn’t she live in a ritzy gated community? How could someone tamper with her car?” I tiptoed across the small bathroom, even though I recognized that with all the noise I was making, I couldn’t possibly sneak up on anyone hiding in the bathtub. I yanked the curtain open. Empty.

  “So?” Lance said. “Remember when we’d sneak into those neighborhoods and swim in their pools? It worked because we acted like we fit in. Hang on a minute.”

  “Don’t be too long. My battery’s dying.” I sat on the edge of the tub and thought about who I knew who’d definitely fit in with Melinda’s neighborhood. Kell, for sure. And Cordelia. Hell, maybe she did live there for all I knew about her. She was so inscrutable. She’d starte
d out writing romance, but when she found out erotica paid better, she immediately switched genres. Very mercenary for someone who seemed so prim. Took us all by surprise. Like at our critique group Christmas party with the white elephant gift exchange. Instead of keeping the delicate bone china tea set she got, she swiped the Led Zeppelin Greatest Hits box set right out from under Jenica’s nose. What else didn’t I know about her? Maybe I didn’t want to know.

  Lance came back on the line. “I’ve been talking to my buddies. Joaquin is the mechanic who worked on Melinda Walter’s car recently. Is there any possibility he found a copy of your manuscript on her seat or something?”

  “Yes, of course. That must be what happened.” I blew out a huge breath and smiled, glad once again to have a cop in the family.

  “Did you stop for coffee this morning?” he asked.

  “And a blueberry muffin.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the detectives that?”

  “How do you know—oh my gosh, I forgot to tell them. I do it almost every day. It completely slipped my mind. I’ll call them about it.”

  “Go ahead or it looks bad. But they already know. And Charlee … ”

  “What?”

  “I know you didn’t kill your agent. Of course. But there’s a process, protocol. Don’t do anything … stupid. Just answer their questions and cooperate. It’s going to take some time. Remember what Dad always said. Marathons start with one step.”

  “Dad said a lot of crazy things. Did he ever run one?”

  “I don’t—”

  “And why are you telling me this? I thought you just said that mechanic, Joaquin, was the suspect.”

  “One of them. Gotta go. And you might want to lay low, hole up in your apartment for a while.”

  His photo disappeared along with my confidence. One of them? Lay low? Lance thought I was in danger? If I was in danger, then I’d put my friends in danger, too, even if the detectives refuse to acknowledge it. I couldn’t lay low, couldn’t do nothing.

  How would I handle this in a novel?

  Four

  I dug out a yellow legal pad from a stack on my desk. I glanced at the notes written on the first two pages, then tore them off, discarding them on a nearby stack of books. Research notes for my next book could wait. I had a real murder to solve.

  At the kitchen table I hunched over the notepad and wrote across the top: Motive, Means, Opportunity, and Alibi.

  I tapped my pen on the pad, contemplating each word. After a few minutes, I tore off the page. Everyone who read my manuscript had all the information they needed to kill someone using mercury.

  Mercury was as easy to get as Glu-Pocalypse. The small beads were virtually invisible and odorless. Just by moving your feet you could turn a big blob into tinier, deadlier beads, disbursing vapor in a small car like Melinda’s very easily. Especially with the heater stuck on full blast and the windows disabled. So Means was a useless category.

  Same with Opportunity. The detectives wanted to know my whereabouts from Sunday evening through Monday morning. With such a huge window of time to tamper with Melinda’s car, everyone also had opportunity.

  Across the top of a clean page, I wrote the only two categories I cared about—Motive and Alibi—and drew a line between them straight down the page. Down the left margin I wrote the names of everyone I knew who’d had access to the Mercury Rising manuscript.

  My critique group: Kell, Jenica, Cordelia, AmyJo, Sheelah, Einstein, Heinrich.

  My beta readers: Suzanne, Dave, Veta, Bubbles.

  Then everyone else: Melinda, Q, and Joaquin the mechanic. I forced myself to add Ozzi’s name, even though the thought that my boyfriend was a murderer made me dizzy.

  Actually, the thought of any of these people being a murderer made no sense, but I began to fill in any information I knew.

  At the meeting this morning—geez, was it really just this morning?—Kell had said he’d been on a red-eye flight from Chicago. I wrote that and “National Airlines” in the space next to his name in the Alibi column.

  In the space across from Sheelah’s name, I jotted that she was in the ER last night and the dentist in the morning.

  I scanned the page, freezing at Melinda’s name. A wave of sadness washed over me and I thought about the people who loved her who’d she’d left behind. I remembered how my family had zombied through the aftermath of my dad’s murder. Months passed before we didn’t have to force ourselves to get out of bed every morning. That had been my first exposure to death, and it might be for Melinda’s family as well. I knew she had a husband, Henry, but she’d never spoken to me of anyone else. Did she have parents? Nieces and nephews? Aunts and uncles? In-laws? One life touches so many, even if we don’t realize it.

  Sending flowers and a card seemed insufficient, but that was standard protocol, right? I mentally attempted several opening lines for the card I knew I’d be writing, but I rejected each. How do you comfort someone you’ve only met a few times, or never? What could I possibly say that would dent their smothering grief? Maybe by the time Melinda’s funeral plans were made public I would have wordsmithed the perfect sentiment, but I doubted it.

  This black cloud threatened to swallow me, so I tenderly arranged thoughts of Melinda and her family in my mental filing cabinet, to be pulled out when I felt I could properly manage my sorrow and perhaps even be useful to them. There was nothing I could do for Melinda’s family right now, or maybe ever. But I’d try again in a few days.

  I thought about calling Ozzi, even picked up the phone, but in the end decided that hearing your girlfriend is a suspect in a murder case should happen in person, and he’d be home in a couple of hours. The odds that the police had already contacted him were fairly slim.

  My attention returned to my list. With a sigh, I X’d out the space for Melinda’s alibi and almost crossed her off completely. But what if she’d done this to herself? Was she depressed? Suicidal? It seemed an overly cumbersome and melodramatic way to kill yourself. Did she stage it? Was she trying to frame someone? A rush of adrenaline surged through my body. That someone could only be me.

  The only reason a person would use this method to kill someone would be to frame me, right? I balled my fists. No. Maybe they couldn’t think of their own method so just used the handiest one, the one spelled out in my manuscript. But then they’d know it would implicate me, and none of my friends would—

  Three deep breaths calmed me enough that I could focus again. I needed to remain analytical, not be thrown by emotions and hypotheticals. I wrote “suicide” and added a question mark under the Motive column next to Melinda’s name.

  Fifteen names, two alibis, and one motive. Not a very promising start. I forced myself to go back to the top of the list and carefully consider each name. I stopped at Cordelia’s, remembering her cryptic text message. Opening my phone, I reread it. Please don’t mention that I read your manuscript … It wouldn’t be convenient.

  It seemed bizarre that she didn’t want me to “inconvenience” her by telling the detectives she read my manuscript. But I certainly couldn’t picture Cordelia in her kitten heels and expensive pearls murdering Melinda. Why inconvenient? And for what? What would her motive be?

  The logical motives for murder—money, love, and revenge—flitted through my brain.

  Could Cordelia be involved with Melinda’s husband? Or Melinda involved with Cordelia’s? Or Cordelia with Melinda? Or their husbands with each other?

  Ridiculous. I shook my head to clear it, the human equivalent of an Etch A Sketch. Didn’t work. Was it ridiculous? Cordelia wrote such over-the-top erotica. Was her imagination that nimble or did she have a life she kept secret?

  I clutched the sides of my head, raking my fingers through my hair. The pressure felt good and seemed like it might quell the sensation that my brain might leak out my ears. Slowly walking my trembling fingers across the
table, I rested my hand on my phone. With a long exhale, I pushed buttons until I was staring at Cordelia’s contact page.

  This was it. The moment I start accusing my friends of murdering my agent and trying to frame me for it.

  “Ready, Charlee?” I stared at the phone in my hand. “Nope.” But what choice did I have? Besides letting the police deal with it, that is. I set the phone down and gradually pushed it as far away as my arm would reach. The side of my face rested on the yellow legal pad for a length of time I couldn’t determine. Long enough to drool a bit, not long enough for my problem to go away.

  “This is ridiculous.” I sat up, wiped the drool from the side of my mouth, and used my sleeve to blot the dribble on the yellow paper. Cordelia didn’t murder Melinda and wasn’t framing me for it. I grabbed my phone. None of my friends were capable of murder, and if I was going to get my life back, all I needed to do was clear them.

  I pushed up my sleeves, sat up straight, and dialed Cordelia.

  She answered before the first ring finished. “Charlee. Have you heard anything?”

  After avoiding my text questions in the police station atrium, her bluntness caught me off guard. “Um … no.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I wanted to ask you why you didn’t want me to tell the cops you read my manuscript.”

  “I don’t … ”

  “Cordelia, a woman was murdered.”

  “I know, but … ”

  “The cops already know. You may as well tell me why it would be ‘inconvenient’ for them to know you read the manuscript.” I used verbal air quotes to highlight my skepticism.

  She heard them. “Perhaps ‘inconvenient’ was a poor word choice.” She paused long enough for me to clench my lips together and vow not to speak first. “It’s not what you think, Charlee.”

  I unclenched. “Let me be the judge of that.” My words came out harsher than I wanted. I took a breath. “Cordelia,” I said, more gently. “Just tell me.”