by Becky Clark
“I don’t know if you remember me—”
“’Course I do.” Dooley’s smile lit up his face. “You’re in Jen’s critique group. What can I get you?” He waved vaguely at the menu written on an oversized chalkboard above his head.
“Actually, I just wanted to talk to you.” I grimaced. “You don’t mind if I sit down, do you?” I eased myself into a molded plastic chair. “I just wiped out in front of the art department.”
“I know exactly where you mean.” Dooley plucked a paper cup from a stack. “You could probably use coffee.” He filled it and brought it out to me.
I accepted it. “I’d rather have a new tailbone, but this is nice, too.” I glanced at the menu. “On second thought, could I get a grilled ham and cheese?”
“Sure.” He started moving fast behind the counter. “What did you want to talk about?” he asked while he worked. “Everything okay with Jen?”
I blew across the top of my coffee to cool it. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I heard you and she went to the Fillmore Sunday night.”
He stared at me. “Checking alibis?”
“No, nothing like that. Besides, I’d think the police have already done that.” He nodded. “I was wondering if … ” I couldn’t think of one thing that sounded plausible. Must have been the pain, because I’d already forgotten AmyJo’s advice to have a plan. I also had forgotten to tell anyone where I was. “Yeah, okay. I’m checking alibis. You two were at the Fillmore?”
“Wouldn’t have missed it. Nobody beats Pleasure Center for Armadillos in concert.” Dooley got a wistful, faraway look as he flipped the sandwich.
“How long did the concert last?”
“You don’t waste free backstage passes. We got there before the sun even went down and then partied with the band afterward at the hotel. Got our picture taken with the band by the official photographer and everything. Still there when I was supposed to be taking an exam on Monday morning.”
“But Jenica was at critique group Monday morning.”
“Barely. I dropped her off and then I went home to crash. Totally spaced my test.” He slid my sandwich onto a paper plate, cut it diagonally, and piled a handful of chips next to it.
“Jenica wasn’t tired?”
“Probably. But she doesn’t like to let you guys down. Serious about her writing, that one.” He placed the plate and some napkins in front of me and plopped into the chair across from me.
“It seems like you’re serious about your art, too, other than blowing off a test,” I said, smiling. “I saw your watercolor hanging in the art building.” I took a big bite of the grilled sandwich. Not quite as crisp as I like, but it was good.
A blush flashed across his cheeks. “Yeah. I’m serious enough, I guess, but I don’t have people like you do. I just have assignments.” He used his thumbnail to scratch at a dried blob of mustard on the table.
I shrugged, then winced. The tailbone pain was migrating upward. “Maybe you should find some people, too. You’ve clearly got talent. I’m sure there are people in the art community who would love to mentor a promising young artist. Go find someone you trust.”
“Maybe I will.” He cocked his head. “This must be why Jen looks up to you so much.”
Jenica looks up to me? News to me.
A customer came in and Dooley got up to take his order. “No charge,” he whispered.
“Thanks,” I whispered back. “Oh, one more thing,” I called to him.
He turned toward me but kept walking.
“Did Jenica mention having to get to writing group early for any reason?”
“Not that I can remember.”
I sipped my coffee and finished my sandwich and chips, expecting to chat more after he served the customer, but a rowdy group of five students came in so I knew he’d be busy. I struggled to stand, and when I did, I gave myself a little standing cat-cow yoga stretch. I didn’t break in half, so I figured I’d live. I picked up my coffee, took a final sip, and threw the cup and my plate away. I waved at Dooley, who hollered a goodbye over the noisy group.
I still didn’t understand the mysterious secrets involved in the Children’s Hospital, but it seemed Jenica had a solid alibi. Just as I reached for the door, my phone chirped a text message from AmyJo. Be careful if you go out. I hear it’s really icy.
Gee, thanks, Ames.
I shuffled outside, carefully studying the sidewalk for any icy patches I hadn’t seen earlier. It was dark but everything seemed dry. When I looked up, I saw Einstein Eichhorn walking about fifteen yards away, on a sidewalk angling toward me.
I waved. “Einstein!”
He looked right at me, pivoted, and headed the opposite direction. I was sure he saw me. I tried to follow, but with my pain, I couldn’t keep up. I asked every person I met where the physics department was and nobody seemed to know, pointing in all sorts of contradictory directions. When I finally got to the building, my back throbbed. I checked the directory and found his name. Great. Third floor.
I hobbled up the stairs, clutching the railing and resting every so often. When I reached his office, it was dark and the door was locked. All that effort for nothing. I struggled back down the stairs, gripping the handrail with two hands like my life depended on it, because it did.
I reached the bottom and turned to the right instead of the left, the way I’d entered the building, and came face to face with the elevator.
Fifteen
It was pitch dark by the time I limped across campus toward my car, the moon obscured by heavy cloud cover. The food, the pain, and the lack of sleep the night before were making me drowsy, and I stumbled more than once. I lost my way a couple of times, my instincts on the fritz. Couldn’t wait to crawl into bed. It seemed a lifetime ago that I’d visited the mechanic’s, but it was just that morning.
My breath came out in an unladylike oomph when I collapsed into the driver’s seat. I took a moment to rest and collect myself, then pulled out my yellow notepad. My pen hovered over Jenica’s name, ready to cross her off as a suspect, but a half-formed notion gnawed at my muddled brain. Jenica and Dooley had been together that night. He wasn’t impartial at all. Concentrating through my fog, I finally grasped that I couldn’t take Dooley’s word on her alibi. My gut told me he was telling the truth about her, but I needed corroboration. I couldn’t figure out how to get it, though, as the fog closed back in.
I stuck my key in the ignition but remained in the parking spot while I set up my hands-free phone and dialed AmyJo. Voicemail. I tried Sheelah.
When she answered, I said, “Thank God.”
“Charlee? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Well, everything. But nothing. I just need you to talk to me while I drive home.”
“You’re not making sense. Where are you?”
“At DU.”
“I’m coming to get you.”
“No. I’ve had a long day and I’m pooped, so I need you to keep me awake. I’ll stay off the freeway and go across on Evans. There won’t be much traffic. Just talk to me for twenty minutes until I get home.”
“Of course. What shall we talk about?”
I pulled out of the parking lot and pointed the Kia toward home. “Anything.”
Sheelah chattered about her day and her tooth and the chapter she’d been working on, but I barely made sense of her words. I asked what I hoped were clarifying questions and made witty banter even as my eyes were drooping. Stopped at a red light at the next major intersection, I opened the window and stuck my head out so the cold air would slap me awake. I felt a bit perkier by the time the light changed, and I hoped it wasn’t just my imagination or wishful thinking. As I picked up speed, though, it became hard to hear Sheelah so I rolled up the window.
“You’re cutting out,” I told her. “Can you hear me?”
“Not very well,” she said.
I checked my phone battery. “My battery’s dying. But I opened the window and feel better now. Wide awake.” Not quite the truth, but I didn’t want her to worry. “Sheelah? You there?” The call had been disconnected; probably not enough juice. I considered plugging into the car charger, but I felt less sleepy now and reasoned I’d be home soon, so I disconnected and threw everything onto the passenger seat.
Traffic remained light, for which I was glad, but I would have been happier closer to home and off the major streets. After a few blocks the lack of traffic and warm car lulled me into drowsiness again. A horn honked and I jerked awake, hyper-aware now of heavy traffic surrounding me. As the traffic ground to a halt, I gripped the wheel and blinked several times to clear the black dots dancing in my vision.
The lights of a gleaming multiplex cinema flickered across the large parking lot of a shabby shopping center to my right. The nearby marquee showed several new movies playing, many of which were well-reviewed. Looked like everyone thought Wednesday evening was the time to see them.
The intersection and shopping center were inadequate and poorly designed, maybe not when they were originally built but certainly now with the addition of the huge theater. The stop-and-go traffic combined with my already drowsy state soon hypnotized me and before I knew it, my slow reflexes forced me into a right-turn-only lane heading into the shopping center. If the concrete barriers hadn’t been right in front of me and if I’d had less muddled thinking, I would have simply waited with my left turn signal blinking until someone let me back out into traffic.
Unfortunately, even small concrete barriers and a touch of muddled thinking can create a change of plans, so I veered right, the opposite direction from the traffic streaming out of the parking lot. I drove slowly, squinting at the road, trying to find a break in the crumbling concrete divider so I could turn around. But there was none. Someone with a very anal-retentive personality probably slept soundly, knowing all cars would drive exactly as pre-determined around the shopping center.
I gave up and decided to simply circle the entire shopping center on the ring road. By the time I got back to where I was forced off the road, the movie theater traffic would have loosened up, I figured. Everything else in the shopping center was already closed and dark—breakfast café, dry cleaners, meat market, nail salon, DMV—all daytime businesses.
The road took me behind the cineplex, which was such a monolith, it hid the lights from the parking lot. My headlights swept across a bright orange sign that screamed in all caps, Warning! Keep Out! Hazardous Area! Danger of Drowning! Private Retention Pond. There was no fence or wall and I shuddered to think of kids playing near here.
I drove slowly and dodged potholes big enough to swallow the Kia. I saw that the concrete lane divider was gone and considered turning around. But since it was probably an equal distance from where I’d been forced into the parking lot and where I expected to exit, I decided to keep going rather than turn around. I knew how torn up the road was the way I’d come; maybe it was better going forward.
The road curved in front of me. I saw the dumpsters for the cineplex at about the two o’clock angle, so I didn’t think the road would go much further, and it certainly couldn’t get any worse.
But it did. After almost breaking an axle in one of the holes, despite my squinting and straining to avoid just such a thing, the black dots danced in my vision again and I stopped to close my eyes. My body must have thought I’d finally fallen into bed and took the opportunity to relax completely. I dropped my head back. So much pleasure. In a Kia. Who would have guessed? I could sleep here. All night. All niii—
BAM! My car jerked in the dark and I felt it moving. By the time I was remotely aware of what was happening, the Kia had traveled at an angle across the road toward the retention pond. I slammed on the brakes and skidded across the earthen easement. When I’d stopped completely, my front wheels were at the edge of the retention pond and I stared, dazed, into a small lake.
I must have fallen asleep, but what was that noise? I looked behind me. Nothing. The dark and the curved road could have hidden anything. Or anyone. Suddenly I snapped fully awake. Visions of Melinda’s wrecked car flashed past my brain. I shoved my car in reverse, kicking up gravel and dirt. I slammed it into drive, overcorrected, and scraped one of the dumpsters as I bounced out of a pothole and careened past. Dodging potholes like they were slalom flags, I raced along the ring road until I got to the arterial road that bordered the shopping center. I skidded to a stop, checked for cars, turned right, and gunned it. Another right turn in front of the shopping center and I was back on the main road.
All the traffic had cleared. The dashboard clock read 9:32. I must have fallen asleep. For how long? Fifteen minutes? Twenty?
I slowed to the speed limit and took deep breaths to calm myself. My head was on a swivel the entire drive home. When I reached my apartment complex twelve minutes later, I felt foolish. I told myself I must have fallen asleep behind the movie theater without putting the car in park. The noise could have been a bird landing on my hood, or a car backfiring a mile away, or even some creative snoring on my part. But whatever it was had startled me and, without fully waking up, I’d put my foot on the gas. Luckily I’d stopped before plunging into the pond.
I pulled into my parking place and inspected the side of the car where I’d sideswiped the dumpster. An eighteen-inch-long scrape now decorated the side of the Kia. I ran my hand along it. Dammit. Deep enough to rust.
I wanted to check the rear bumper, too, because I couldn’t quite shake the sensation that I’d been pushed across that road. I gasped when I saw the back of the car.
Someone had written in the grime, Wash me … OR ELSE.
How long had that been there? Wouldn’t I have noticed it before? I racked my weary brain trying to retrace my steps around my car that day. Surely I’d walked around the back at some point earlier. But I couldn’t be sure.
And the message? I’ve seen plenty of finger-scrawled “wash me” notes on cars, but never with an “or else.” Was that someone’s idea of a joke?
If so, I didn’t get it.
Sixteen
It seemed I’d just drifted off to sleep when the phone woke me. I groped for it like an octopus on Valium. The charging cord was too short to allow me to see the caller ID. Didn’t matter, since I was too groggy to see it even if it was a mile long. Slumber had allowed me to forget about my back pain, but now it came screaming back. “Mrph?”
“Charlemagne Russo?
“Mrph.”
“This is William Rosenthal of Rosenthal, Rosenthal, and Squib. We represent Penn & Powell Publishing.”
“Squid?”
“Squib.”
“Penn & Powell?”
“Your publisher.”
Back pain and the sharp tone in the man’s voice roused me. Was I dreaming? Yes. No. That pain was all too real. I yanked the cord and brought the phone to my face. 212. Manhattan area code. I rolled and wiggled and heaved and maneuvered myself up to the headboard, wincing with each movement. “Sorry. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“I can imagine.” He cleared his throat. “It has come to my attention that you are spreading false and malicious gossip about my client via the print media.”
Defining all those words and putting them in context took me longer than normal.
“Ms. Russo?”
“Yes, I’m—”
“While we look into this matter further, your contract is being reviewed. You are on notice to cease any defamatory language. We’ll be in touch.”
“Can I speak with my editor?”
“No. There will be no communication with Penn & Powell in any form whatsoever until further notice. If you need to discuss anything, you will do so through me. Expect a certified letter.”
Rosenthal hung up. I stared at my phone until it went dark. This was bad. Very bad. I kn
ew it, but had no idea how to fix it.
My phone lit up while I sat there staring at it. For a split second I thought it might be Lance or Ozzi calling to say, “Gotcha! You really fell for that one. Let’s go get some pancakes.”
But no. The caller ID told me it was Jenica.
“Did I wake you?”
“No … I was … up.”
“Are you sure? People are weird when the phone wakes them up. Like they don’t want to admit they ever sleep.”
“Yeah … ”
“So I hear you were checking up on me and Dooley.”
I shook my head to clear it, but that must only work in cartoons because I still felt fuzzy. Did an attorney just threaten me? I checked the call history. Yep. Area code 212. Defamation. Newspaper articles. Reporters. Detectives. Murderer. Wash me … or else.
I leaned forward, inhaled through my nose, and exhaled through my mouth. An acute sense of purpose and determination calmed me. I had to find out who killed Melinda and determine if I was in any danger myself. I shifted further over onto my butt cheek until the pain lessened.
“Jenica, why wasn’t Heinrich at the critique group meeting the day Melinda was killed?”
“What? You need to wake up. Are you dreaming?”
“I’m wide awake now. Where was Heinrich that day? You guys go way back.”
“Charlee, just because he was my English teacher doesn’t mean I keep track of him.”
“I know you guys talk. Do you know where he was?”
“No. But just like me and Dooley, he wasn’t out being a homicidal maniac, if that’s what you’re getting at. I think you’d know that after that thing with your brother.”
“What thing?”
“At the school a few years back?”
One of Lance’s first calls as a rookie was an altercation. He got there and made it worse. Way worse. “How do you know about that?”
“I was there. So was Heinrich. It was our school. Those were Heinrich’s students.”
