by Valley Sams
Nothing was out of place. The interior looked dark and silent, not even a speck of dust where it shouldn’t be.
Mac was suddenly very tired. She sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time that day and lay her forehead against the hard plastic of the steering wheel. She was responsible for this. If she hadn’t gone meddling where she didn’t belong, forcing Brie out of her shell and back into the real world, they would be sitting in that silent chocolate shrine they had built together…sharing a cup of designer espresso and making fun of the tourists.
She turned her weary head to the side then rapidly sat up.
MoonPhase Remedies was completely trashed.
The entire front window of the tiny shop had been smashed in. The sidewalk and street in front of the store was littered with broken shell Buddhas, shattered dragon statues and tangled wind chimes. It looked as if someone had gutted a hippie colony and left them for dead.
Despite her almost immediate dislike of Cheryl, Mac flung open the door and hurried across the road.
“Cheryl?” she called out, warily. The front door was off its hinges and hung outward. The powerful gusts from the ocean played with the broken door, slamming it back and forth like a petulant teenager would. The inside of the shop was dark, but Mac caught a familiar odor that made it clear Cheryl was inside.
Mac stepped in carefully, avoiding a pile of shattered amber salt crystals. Cheryl was sitting in the back; in the exact same spot they had first met her. She drew deeply from her pipe, its contents glowing red in the dark. The wall of jars behind her had been completely destroyed. Dark glass lay in a carpet on the floor and over the entire counter in front of her. The pungent odors of whatever liquids she had been peddling mixed in with the heavy sweetness of Cheryl’s smoke.
“Are you alright, Cheryl?” Mac said, her shoes crunching the glass underfoot.
Cheryl looked up from her pipe; her eyes red rimmed and blank.
“It’s for my glaucoma,” she said in a monotone voice.
“We covered that,” Mac said, coming closer to the huddled woman despite herself. “It’s fine. Are you alright?” She motioned at the practically bombed-out remainders of the shop. “I’m so sorry. They said someone had their shop broken into; I’m so sorry it was you.”
Cheryl let out a derisive laugh that was more of a slap than anything else.
“Better me than you though, eh? Oh well. Life sucks. This ain’t the first time this has happened. You pack it up and move on. There’s nothing here I can’t make again. A glue gun and some glitter and I’m back in business. Police are working on it, whatever that means. Whatever that’s worth.”
A sudden gust of wind blew open the back door. It had been broken off its hinges as well and Mac couldn’t help but jump when the roar of cold air and bright light tore through the room.
The wind caught the loose papers and herbs that were strewn about, lifting them up and spiraling them for a moment before releasing them again. This was going to be a tremendous amount of work for this woman, especially in her condition.
“Let me help you pick up a bit,” Mac said. “This is quite a job.”
Cheryl shrugged her shoulders dismissively.
“If it floats your boat.” She slipped off her stool, those dirty sneakers of hers hitting the glass with a loud pop. “I guess I’ll start with the papers. Need those receipts for the taxman, I guess. Mr. Snoopy Accountant’s gonna want them.”
Mac crunched over to the back door and did her best to shut it. She leaned down and began to help Cheryl pick the loose sheets and onionskin receipts from where they were crumpled and scattered throughout the store.
Cheryl mumbled to herself. Her body hunched and her hair wild, she amused herself with almost incoherent blame game…government, police, reptilian people, and the Illuminati. The list went on. She didn’t seem to need or want Mac to contribute to her running monologue and this suited Mac just fine. ‘You can’t fight crazy’ was one of her grandfather’s favorite sayings – it was certainly true in this case.
Mac had almost picked up the last of the papers when she pulled a thin pink slip from under an upside down oil diffuser. All the other receipts and papers had been nondescript, white and carefully written out in Cheryl’s surprisingly compact penmanship. Not surprising for someone as paranoid as she was; every receipt had been a careful documentation of exactly what the person had purchased. The pink receipt she held in her hand now, however, was curiously different. Instead of the exact date, time, product and even address of the customer, it simply had the letters ‘S and C’ in Cheryl’s accurate hand. There was nothing about it that was similar to the others.
“Is this a receipt, too?” Mac asked. “Should I just put that in with the others?”
Cheryl straightened up with a groan. When she saw the pink slip, she shrugged again. She looked annoyed, but no more than usual.
“Customers pay with cash sometimes. Not often. It’s all cards, cards, cards…if they do cash, I use them old timey carbon receipts. Give it here.” she commanded, her hand reaching out.
Mac crossed the room obediently and handed her the slip. Cheryl lifted her orange poncho and stuffed the receipt into a skirt pocket. She noticed Mac looking at her quizzically and attempted for the first time what was a very off-putting smile. Her teeth were dark at the roots and unkempt…
“Mr. Snoopy Accountant likes those ones best.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The walk to the police station was at least a half an hour, but Mac felt she could do with the break. The fall air was sharp and as she passed the rows of mansions slumbering behind the walls that guarded them, she could smell the damp leaves moldering in piles along the stone. The sun was almost gone now, the light struggling against the grey clouds slowly stalking across the ocean. She looked into the windows of the houses (fortresses more like it) as she passed. No one was home. It felt like everyone was involved in today’s drama. Mac imagined they were all still huddled around each other at the pier, casting wild blame, egged on by blustery Brenda and her unfounded accusations.
But are they? Her doctorate in criminology told her they weren’t. It told her she would be foolish to think Sabrina wasn’t going to get framed for this. That intrusive education of hers was rapidly winning the arm-wrestle with her naïve hope.
Still, chin up. She was sure that by the time she got to the station, Louis would’ve finished his interrogation and Brie would be clear to leave. Maybe she could even convince the both of them to go grab a taco and a pitcher of beer down by the beach and watch the storm come in.
Her hopes were as crushed as Cheryl’s shell idols however, when she turned the corner to see Louis striding out the front door of the station. He was pulling his black jacket over his shoulders while talking on his phone, his face still a mask of concern.
Looks like pitchers of beer were going to be out of the question.
Mac sped up her pace, shivering despite herself as another blast of cold air whipped up the street.
Louis hung up his phone and slipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket. He pulled his keys out and began to unlock his car. It was his actual car, a beat up grey Honda and not a cruiser…so that must be a good thing, right?
“We have to stop meeting like this.” Mac said. It was a weak attempt at humor. At this point, she was willing to try anything.
Louis smiled at her in an equally weak attempt at congeniality. He was just as preoccupied as before; she could see that now that she was closer – perhaps even more so.
“I thought I’d come and see if you’d released the notorious Sabrina back into society.” It wasn’t like her to be this jovial. She felt like she was, on some level, playing his part. Or at least the part the old Louis used to have.
His eyes darkened.
“Mac…” he began.
Mac felt her shoulders drop. Her arms, which had been holding her warmth close to her like a jacket dropped as well and she felt the wind hit her again, burrowing into her n
ervous stomach like a spike.
“Is she ok?” It was the only thing she could think to say. The only polite thing, that was.
“She’s fine.” Louis was still holding the door handle, his impatience to leave as plain as his awkwardness with the whole situation. “Or she will be if you don’t get involved.”
Mac felt like she’d been hit for the second time.
“What?”
Louis dropped his head and she saw he was just as tired as she was.
“She’s the prime suspect now. I’m sorry, but you knew she would be. I know you knew it. You’re just as smart as any of us when it comes to these things. If you get involved…like you usually do…” he added, hesitantly. “Even though you say you won’t...If you get involved, you could get implicated, too. And I don’t think…”
He paused again. He made eye contact with her for the first time and Mac knew at once that he was pleading with her.
“Mac, I don’t think I could take you getting in trouble. We’ll get her out of this, I promise, but it’s not going to be easy.”
“What do you mean? I know she didn’t do it. Louis, you know she didn’t do it, too. She’s capable of a lot of things, but not murder.” Mac heard her voice becoming shrill with emotion. She didn’t like it.
“There are multiple witnesses that heard her insulting him. Other competitors, both of the other judges, that radio fellow in the spider suit, practically everyone there heard Sabrina going on about what a horrible person he was.”
Mac felt her cheeks begin to burn. She could hear her heart thudding in her ears.
“I had no idea that insulting someone could make you a murderer,” she said sharply.
“No, but handing someone a poisoned chocolate does.” Louis was even sharper. His big brown eyes were suddenly furious and his hand, which had almost taken hers minutes ago was back on the handle of his car.
Panic replaced Mac’s anger and for the first time in a while, she felt her eyes brim with tears. Louis looked away, impatiently. Of course he looked away. He was just as convinced as the rest of the town. In his core, despite all the charm and intelligence, he wasn’t on her side. Maybe he never had been.
She took a deep breath, willing the tears in her eyes to dry up.
“I know you found cyanide in the chocolate,” she said. “I saw the iPad.”
Louis still didn’t look at her. He was facing the ocean, chewing his lip as if the pain would stop whatever he wanted to say from storming out, just as cold and painful as the wind.
After a pause, he opened the car door.
“Just… stay out of it, Catharine,” he said and slid himself behind the wheel.
It was only when the car drove away, its steamy exhaust wafting behind in the cold, did Mac allow those tears to finally fall.
CHAPTER NINE
What did ‘staying out of it’ mean, exactly?
Did it mean not to actively pursue the investigation by utilizing the services of the local constabulary? Did it mean to leave the officers to do their business without hassling them in any way? Seeing that Louis was the head detective on the case and he had told her to ‘stay out of it’, it could easily be assumed that he meant the actual police investigation.
Not her own investigation.
She didn’t need to stay out of that, did she?
In that case, Louis would not be entirely against the fact that she slipped every front desk kid in town fifty dollars to tell her whether Brenda was staying in the hotel or not. It wasn’t as if she had dressed provocatively and promised favors in exchange for information. God, no. Catherine Mackenzie would never do that. She was as close to American royalty as you could get in the town. It was only a few dollars, well placed, that got her the information she wanted to start her own little enquiry.
Just a little one.
The last kid, his face filled with blackheads and sprouting hair like the MC’s spider legs, had asked for an additional fifty to release his information. She couldn’t help but admire that kind of opportunism.
She stood in the perfectly bland hallway of Mackenzie Bay’s most exclusive hotel. They had renovated the historic beach front city hall into a hotel a few years ago, to create the kind of contrived local character that the tourists would lap up. It only had a few rooms, but each of them was impeccably decorated and it offered the kind of metropolitan services that most out of towners demanded when they came to stay. Wi-Fi, for example, and service that wasn’t accompanied by a sneer.
Mac took a deep breath and knocked. She knew very well that the moment her knuckles hit the blonde wood of the door was the point of no return. Oh well – a snide little voice spoke in her ear, that’s what Louis gets…
She could hear a shuffling behind the door and then the sound of the chain being drawn back. Mac stepped back, not knowing what kind of reception she would receive from the Food Channel diva.
The door opened a crack, just enough for Mac to see a mascara stained eye go wide.
“Leave me alone.” She hollered. Her voice sounded fuzzy and Mac could hear the clink of ice from a glass in her free hand.
Acting fast, Mac shoved her foot in the door before Brenda had the chance to slam it shut.
“You move your foot or I’ll crush it.” Brenda yelled again.
“I just want to talk to you, that’s all. It’s not official police business. I’m not out to get you, I just want to talk.”
With the door open slightly now, Mac could see the room was strewn with clothes and heavy with cigarette smoke. There was an open bottle of bourbon on a table beside the window.
“Give me a reason to let you in, sunshine. Your friend is the one who put my Benson under the ground.” Those raccoon eyes filled with big, sopping tears and her lips trembled again. Mac half wondered how much of it was an act. She supposed there wasn’t a celebrity alive that you could be sure was being genuine. Still…something she had just said…. She had the key she needed.
“Your Benson?” Mac asked. She smiled her lopsided smile and watched triumphantly as Brenda slowly backed away from the door.
“Come on in…” she sighed. “I guess I’ve always got time for a little girl talk.”
Mac couldn’t help but cough when she entered. From the look of the crumpled packages of cigarettes on the floor and the almost empty bottle, she had not been dealing with her grief in a positive manner. It was not even noon yet. Mac coughed again, the smoke heavy enough to swirl above their heads like cancerous ghosts.
“Yeah…” Brenda said. “Don’t tell my agent. I’m supposed to be quitting. But…after this morning. After Benson…”
Her white dress was draped across the bathroom door and she appeared to be wearing nothing more than the robe the hotel supplied. She looked so much like a heart broken housewife that it was hard for Mac to associate her with the glittering star of television and print she had met this morning.
Brenda walked over to the table where the bottle sat and picked up her phone.
“It’s been years. We didn’t want anyone to know. He’s supposed to be married; I’m supposed to be married. You know that man I’m always with on the cover of my magazines? My husband?” She spat out the word. She was drunker than Mac had initially thought, the confessions pouring out of her like Mac was her priest. “He’s my best friend. He’s got a boyfriend in every neighborhood in Los Angeles. You can’t throw a stone without hitting one of his lovers. Some of them are big stars too but…” She made a tutting noise and waved one of red talons at Mac. “I can’t let that cat out of the bag. Pretty sure I’ve done enough damage already. Take a look…”
She swayed over to Mac’s side and leaned in, the phone in her hand. She began to cycle through photographs on her phone, flipping through what seemed like countless shots of Benson Bevacqua and herself. There were shots of the two of them in Europe over extravagant dinners, shots of them on the beach, shots of Benson looking just as miserable as ever in profile while he drove. Brenda started to shudder besid
e her as she began crying yet again.
“Right before this stupid event, he dumped me. Me. Told me he couldn’t do it any more, that if it came out it could destroy both of our careers. He said he already had a terrible reputation and he didn’t need it to get any worse. God…”
Brenda threw the phone onto the mattress, swinging like a drunken pendulum from misery to rage.
“I hated him. Hated him for that. I was the only one who understood him and then he goes and throws me aside like one of his lackeys. You know how that feels?”
For a moment, Mac remembered that piercing pain in her chest when Louis drove away a few hours early. The desperation had filled her so much she was tempted to race down the street after him, wailing like an idiot for his attention.
